Fewer environments require as much as reliability and accuracy in documentation as healthcare institutions do. Documentation requirements of medical procedures are necessary for future reference, making medical transcription a vital component of the healthcare life cycle. A slight mistake is enough to cause major losses. Medical transcription errors can be caused due to following reasons.
- There were not enough quality checks of the documents.
- The transcriptionist does not have the required knowledge of the medical field, thus confusing homophones and making unintentional, but costly errors.
- Poor audio is a major barrier, due to which the transcriptionist is unable to make sense of the dictation.
- Incorrect format is used in the dictated reports, resulting in missing information or unclear statements.
To make sure your healthcare institution creates faultless documents, apply the following tips to eliminate medical transcription errors.
1. Hire the Right Staff
To begin with, you should make sure that you have a qualified team to take care of medical transcription in your clinic or hospital. In case, you are planning to outsource, always assess their skills and certifications, especially their language proficiency. In this way, you can protect your medical record management.
2. Quality Check
After the medical transcription is finished, there has to be a proofreading process in place. For this purpose, you will need the help of an experienced team of editors and proofreaders, who can view the medical documents and single out the errors. By increasing quality checks, you can minimize error possibilities to a minimum.
3. Go Through the Entire Audio First
It may seem time-consuming, but this step can actually speed up transcription. When you listen to the whole audio, it can help you get a clear-cut understanding of the transcription, improving its overall quality.
4. Monitor Feedback
It is essential to monitor feedback from editors, transcriptionists, and clients. It can identify common errors, particularly their causes and those who are the most frequent participants. If required, you can train your staff so these errors can be limited.
5. Install Speech Recognition Apps
There are several speech recognition apps that help in transcribing audio files. Apps can save you a great deal of time when compared to manual procedures. However, make sure to add another quality check to enhance the quality of the final output.
6. Acquire the Latest Equipment
Today, medical care is highly reliant on the quality of data provided to the clinicians. Hence, your transcription equipment has to be reliable and powerful enough to generate the required quality. You should regularly update the reporting system and incorporate the necessary safeguards for improving your existing transcription equipment. All of this can improve the quality of audio.