Medical Transcription: A Versatile Tool for Hospitals beyond Managing Costs

In a recession hit market as USA, even the medical industry, which is closely connected to the critical aspect of human life, is not less affected. Therefore, it is not strange to see clinics and hospitals in US resorting to cost cutting measures and going in for affordable outsourced services. Medical Transcription, the prerequisite for medical documentation in modern times, has received obvious significance as an outsourced service in recent years, with affordability being considered one major aspect., and looking to the increased demand of medical transcription operators and services in US alone, this will continue to be in focus, for variety of reasons including cost-effectiveness.

As a major attribute associated to medical transcription, comes the convenience to document the sequence of events carried out between a doctor and his patient. This facilitates documenting the most crucial details involved in any case in the form of a soft copy, post medical transcription of a given audio record. This way, hospitals get all the details such as patient’s health profile, medication and consultation provided by concerned physician, along with every minute point so as to carry out his treatment, by way of medical transcription. Needless to emphasize, if hospitals don’t take help of medical transcription services, they must be doing it through in-house resources. In other words, hospitals or clinics save considerable amount of time, resources and cost by hiring a medical transcription service provider.

When cost is a concern, you can never think of spending lavishly & medical transcription is no exception in that respect. The present online buzz has simplified things for better, as medical transcription services can be as well availed overseas. Sitting in US, a hospital management can employ a medical transcription agency in India or elsewhere and still ensure up-to-date documentation of its medical records. When medical transcription within the country is not coming reasonably, hospitals prefer the overseas way & grab good deals with a medical transcription agencies located abroad.

A handy modus operandi is another feature coming with medical transcription. When hospitals lead the medical transcription way, they indirectly simplify the job of their support staff & back office workers who might be less acquainted with intricate medical terminology. A good medical transcription agency will usually ensure that it produces medical documents that are multipurpose & easy to understand at every interface. So the objective to generate a simplified version of the most complex lingo spelled out by medical practitioners gets met through this document generated by medical transcription provider.

In a country like USA, essentiality of medical transcription cannot be less stressed also because documenting patient details & health records is mandatory for hospitals. Furthermore, healthcare facility centres are operated in high-tech environment and therefore, professional functioning of these centres can be ensured only with the expertise coming with medical transcription specialists. Ideally, such medical transcription service providers use high degree of security channels such as HITECH or HIPAA Compliance and ensure a secure & authentic edge to medical documentation.

Affordability is definitely one aspect when zeroing down on a medical transcription agency within the US or abroad, but given the assorted advantages coming along with medical transcription services, hospitals can look forward to a really sophisticated work environments in their purview.

About Mediscribes

Mediscribes, Inc. is one of the fastest growing transcription & document management systems providers in United States, based in Metro Louisville. Mediscribes is an ISO 9000-2001 certified company, rendering cost-effective consolidated transcription solutions to major hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare facilities in United States. Mediscribes is the most value-providing organization in the market today with a strong presence in America and offshore locations. The firm specializes in providing highly accurate transcription adhering to ADHI guidelines in unbeatable turnaround time with robust & proven document management system as its vantage point to its esteemed clientele.

Mediscribes provides end-to-end transcription solutions as its primary offering. For our customers, we focus on dictation systems, both ASP as well as enterprise level solutions, with the help of our most valued asset   ezVoiceIntelligence (ezVI), providing specialty-specific qualitative transcription along with a “whole nine yards” document management system. Mediscribes specializes in EMR data integration as well. Our data dispatch department is highly proficient in integrating transcribed reports into any type of EMR. Healthcare facilities that do not have EMR get the option to use our web-based file monitoring interface called eTranscribe for global access to their data. eTranscribe has special features of E-signing, E-faxing, auto-printing, and user-friendly document search criteria.

For additional information, please visit http://www.mediscribes.com

HealthCare Data Mining and Natural Language Processing

HealthCare Data Mining and Natural Language Processing

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Mediscribes, A Segment Of The Mega Job-Market Determined To Quash All Errors

The recent HIPAA laws in the USA seeking to attend to the consumer (patient in this case) have made for improved healthcare and the present global scenario of competitive healthcare has been made much more cost conscious with its affect on the employment market with the increased concern on access to healthcare and patient privacy.

Mediscribes, a solution provider for this sector, has completely engrossed the concepts coined by Six Sigma with the two most important facets of medical transcription business viz. turnaround time and accuracy to come up with a unique solution applicable across the entire business spectrum.

From describing Medical Transcription services and building its business model it goes on to process mapping in the area of operations, production etc. It simplifies the implementation of Six Sigma and opines that operational efficiency may be seen in terms of turnaround time (TAT) and Accuracy of files. After using the six sigma approach the benchmarked improvements are to be sustained through continual improvements shades of ISO.

The Six Sigma approach has been found applicable to all Medical Transcription operations and critical to its success are the managerial & team support as well as software support given that no significant investments are necessary for these improvements which exist in the operations. This approach may be constrained due to the lack of domain experts. Since this process is usually funded internally, by the management, it is but appropriate that their representative (usually the CEO) gets a ringside view of this team effort along the identified milestones. The roles of the team members are clearly identified for the core processes under the SIPOC method in the fields of implementation, Sales, IT, HR etc.

The critical-to-quality (CTQ) parameters of the core processes are set out with the specifications identifying the various parameters and the risk factors along with their mitigation are set out. The typical modes of the core processes are also spelt out. The TAT and Accuracy are sampled and measured as per the AAMT guidelines. A graphical analysis of TAT and Accuracy levels has been carried out and error marking has been done using the Kappa method, t-test etc.

The common errors in TAT and Accuracy have been identified and a learning curve has been delineated in the C&E diagram for TAT and Accuracy levels and a control chart developed as well as the Pareto analysis carried out too.

All these learning have been condensed into action plans with a solution priority matrix for ease of application of Six Sigma into the Medical Transcription business. Standard Operating Procedures, responsibilities etc. have been cod ified in a manual and scorecards too have been developed for monitoring the key process parameters. The correlation of the results showing the ‘before’ and ‘after’ SIX Sigma levels too have shown the positive effects of the Six Sigma approach.

Mediscribes has shown how the medical transcription business in India may prove itself a cost conscious one by synergizing the various processes through the six sigma way!

About Mediscribes

Mediscribes, Inc. is one of the fastest growing transcription & document management systems providers in United States, based in Metro Louisville. Mediscribes is an ISO 9000-2001 certified company, rendering cost-effective consolidated transcription solutions to major hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare facilities in United States. Mediscribes is the most value-providing organization in the market today with a strong presence in America and offshore locations. The firm specializes in providing highly accurate transcription adhering to ADHI guidelines in unbeatable turnaround time with robust & proven document management system as its vantage point to its esteemed clientele.

Mediscribes provides end-to-end transcription solutions as its primary offering. For our customers, we focus on dictation systems, both ASP as well as enterprise level solutions, with the help of our most valued asset   ezVoiceIntelligence (ezVI), providing specialty-specific qualitative transcription along with a “whole nine yards” document management system. Mediscribes specializes in EMR data integration as well. Our data dispatch department is highly proficient in integrating transcribed reports into any type of EMR. Healthcare facilities that do not have EMR get the option to use our web-based file monitoring interface called eTranscribe for global access to their data. eTranscribe has special features of E-signing, E-faxing, auto-printing, and user-friendly document search criteria.

For additional information, please visit http://www.mediscribes.com

Media Contact (Mediscribes)
Mike Perry
marketing@mediscribes.com
 
Mediscribes

12806 Townepark Way
Louisville, KY 40243-2311
Ph: 502-400-9374
http://www.mediscribes.com
http://www.bizscribes.com
Copyright © 2009. Mediscribes.
Mediscribes is a registered trademark. All Rights Reserved.

Healthcare Data Mining, Structured Data and Natural Language Processing

Medicine and healthcare have been one of the most researched and studied branches of Science for centuries.  There are records of use of medicines as early as 500 B.C.  Research and development over millions of years has led to the establishment of the current structured healthcare system.

Documentation of patient records is an integral component of healthcare and mandatory in many countries which rely on insurance-based healthcare systems. Early forms of healthcare documentation involved physicians keeping hand-written records of patient visits and filing this information for future reference.  Managing records of thousands of patients in paper became impossible, not to mention that paper-based records were vulnerable to loss in natural calamities. This led to the birth of electronic healthcare data capture and documentation.  Patient records were then managed in the form of electronic documents and systems like EMRs, EHRs, and other forms of electronic healthcare data management systems provided secure patient information and easily available to the physicians whenever required.

Hospitals and healthcare practices across the US spend thousands of dollars every year in documenting and managing patient care details to meet statutory requirements of the healthcare industry.  Most of this data is recorded and stored in EMRs and EHRs and used generally for insurance purposes or for reference.

An innovative and visionary line of thought is the use of concrete data and evidence to support medical decisions.  This is called EBM or evidence-based medicine.  Evidence of this is available from as early as 1854 when John Snow (considered the father of epidemiology) used maps with bar graphs to discover the source of a cholera outbreak and trace it to the water supply system in London.  He counted the number of deaths and plotted the victims’ addresses on a map and saw that all the deaths occurred around a common water body.  This was one of the earliest applications of data mining.

The modern EMR of a hospital or healthcare facility is a rich treasure-house of information of thousands of patients with a wide facet of illnesses, containing thousands of medicines, history etc.  Each and every bit of information stored in this system could be a part of a pattern of events which if studied could give valuable insights into the pattern of diseases and the techniques of treatment and if researched lead to predictions about disease outbreaks.

The question however is how do we tap into this vast pool of data and extract the information we need!!! This could be available either by:

1. Manually searching through thousands of documents.
2. Creating an electronic tool to search for data and analyze patterns.

Manual searching of such huge volumes of data is not a practical solution.  An electronic tool to do that would have to be an intelligent system which should know exactly what to search for, where to search it, and how to present it in the most useful way.  Different physicians have different styles of dictation and formats of reports, the search tool will have to separate out the required information and present the most valuable information.

For example:

Heart disease is one of the most common causes of death in the United States.

Identification of early signs of heart disease can save thousands of lives.  Analyzing a database of thousands of patients with heart disease can give valuable information about the probable causes, nature of progression, etc., of heart disease and help in developing systems that could identify heart disease at the earliest signs of occurrence leading to timely treatment and preventive techniques can save many lives.

Natural Language Processing or NLP is a field of computer science and linguistics concerned with the interactions between computers and human (natural) languages.  It began as a branch of artificial intelligence.  In theory, natural language processing is a very attractive method of human–computer interaction.  Natural language understanding is sometimes referred to as an AI-complete problem because it seems to require extensive knowledge about the outside world and the ability to manipulate it.

Combining NLP and data mining provides the solution to tap into the huge resource of health-care data and provide tangible solutions to queries and problems.

EZDI is a clinical Natural Language Processing Engine that identifies and converts relevant text into codes and numbers using patented technology.

EZDI combines data mining and NLP to extract clinical information from an EMR, or any healthcare documentation system, and provides structured information on diseases, findings, procedures, microorganisms, pharmaceuticals, etc., arranged systematically with computer processable collection of medical terminology SNOMED-CT (Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine – Clinical Terms). Key Areas of Application Include:

• Improving the Quality of Patient Care

Identifying high-risk patient groups with combinations of symptoms and/or risks.

Identifying the need for prophylactic measures to prevent outbreak of disease.

Improve patient care through efficient prescribing of drugs by identifying duplication or over-prescribing of drugs, and also identifying potential drug interactions in contraindicated drugs

Search for statistical data regarding patient-disease patterns, classifying them based on age, gender, geographical locations, food groups, etc., by identifying common factors among patients with similar diseases. Identifying the need for diagnostic tests in specific patients, leading to effective dispensing of health care measures.

• Ensure Compliance of Health Care Documentation

EZDI’s search engine makes auditing and reporting of “medical records compliance” an automated process.

• Revenue Generation and Saving

Lowering the cost and effort involved in clinical Research and Development through automated chart review. 

Identifying the need for specific diagnostic tests in specific patients, leading to effective dispensing of health care measures and eliminating unnecessary tests. 

EZDI is the perfect tool for evidence-based medicine and treatment and is the future of healthcare in general.  With accuracy up to 98% and immediate availability of query results, EZDI is the future of clinical data analytics this product will ensure more effective and efficient healthcare delivery.

About ezDI

The Company is one of the leaders in business intelligence and healthcare analytics that aim at improving the quality of services in health care and reducing costs. The company offers integrated solutions with a single data feed, and increases the industry’s speed, accuracy, flexibility and value overtime.


For additional information, please visit http://www.ezdi.us .

Media Contact (ezDI)
Mike Perry
sales@ezdi.us

ezDI LLC.
12806 Townepark Way
Louisville, KY 40243-2311
Ph: 502 -400-9374
http://www.ezdi.us

Six Sigma for Medical Transcription

Six sigma for medical transcription

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ezDI Makes the Case for Mature Analytics in Healthcare Cost Containment

As a leader in the field of healthcare analytics, ezDI has constantly escalated in the dimension of the market and business intelligence. The present director has shared the preview of the healthcare cost containment with the industry recently. According to the esteemed director, plans formulated by most companies do not exactly have the required level of maturity that is demanded by most employers. Putting light on the making of the case for better and well sophisticated healthcare informatics, the director argues that existing plans do not address the needs and requirements of the Affordable Care Act. In his presentation, he meticulously talks about cost containment and its importance to health care executives. The changes in the pattern are due to the notable health care reform, which according to the company is indispensable.

"Plans that do not move towards centralized tools, stronger analytics, and process integration will pay the price, and will leave potential cost savings on the table due to redundancy and inefficiency,” says the director. "The time now is to objectively assess how your efforts stack up," he says, talking about the increasing pressure on various groups effected.

The company officials talks about the importance of right evaluation to healthcare executives. “There is a need of evaluation by using the best practices of the industry and self-assessment with five components in the core of sophisticated analytics initiative,” argues the present director. The first component is the goals and priorities which define if the cost containment goals are clear and the required measurements are in place. Second component of prime importance is the analytical tools and their nature. It is also necessary to know if skilled and analytical talent is available for the development of cost containment action plans, which is the third component. In the fourth component, the company talks about the commitment of business areas for cost containment. The powers of executive leader in leveraging a cost-functional team are another key aspect. In the fifth and final component, the case study deals with the budget and the ability to acquire tools.

In the core, the company has been highly successful in using data from EMR and Transcript files for drawing various conclusions. The data that has been used from EMR and Transcript has been converted into a single structured format, which has enabled every user to draw better conclusions from the information. The entire process will power various groups to query and analyze the data available for better and thoughtful decision making. The core advantages of the case include substantial reduction in the cost and saves time on the base studies. The physicians will also be benefited as they can suggest the best medicine to patients as per requirement.

About ezDI


The Company is one of the leaders in business intelligence and healthcare analytics that aim at improving the quality of services in health care and reducing costs. The company offers integrated solutions with a single data feed, and increases the industry’s speed, accuracy, flexibility and value overtime.

ezDI LLC allows a users to enter text queries as they would with any search engine and returns medically relevant results across both structured data and unstructured data. Using advanced Clinical Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology to understand the intention behind the queries typed by the user.

For additional information, please visit http://www.ezdi.us.

10 Hilarious Medical Transcription Errors

Medical transcription is a very important process when it comes to the business of saving lives. Those are the seemingly indecipherable notes on your patient sheet that your doctor will look over to help decide which medicines and treatments you will need to become a functioning human being again. Unfortunately, a lot of these notes are written in haste and words can be misspelled, forgotten, or switched around.
You might be shocked to hear that doctors goof up on those notes, especially when receiving wrong doses or entirely wrong medicines can do much more harm than good. While medical transcription errors are best avoided, not all of them spell doom for a patient. In fact, a lot of them are hilarious. Here are some of the best medical transcription errors that have found themselves leaked onto the Internet.

Transcription Error: The patient was breathing heavily with no signs of respiration

Hmm. This sounds like the kind of case that only House M.D. could solve, with a mixture of snark and common sense. I guess the twist ending would be chest spasms without lung compression. Or House would just call whoever wrote this note an idiot.

Transcription Error: The baby was delivered, the cord clamped and cut and handed to the pediatrician, who breathed and cried immediately

Doctors spend years and years in school, learning how to do doctor things. After these years and years of school, they have to go through years of on the job training. This is quite understandable, as anybody with a decent chance of being elbow deep in somebody’s intestines should know what they are doing. The downside of this is doctors don’t learn sentence structure. Or this was just the world’s most emotional M.D.

Transcription Error: Exam of genitalia reveals that he is circus sized

This is the type of note that we all wished our doctors would write for us. Forget those cheesy pick-up lines. Whenever you are at the bar you would just pull out this official documentation from your doctor, show it to the woman of your choice, and have the night of your life. This is of course assuming that the note is accurate, which this example certainly wasn’t. It was just the best accidental compliment of that patient’s life.

Transcription Error: Bleeding started in the rectal area and continued all the way to Los Angeles

That sounds terrifying. The specific level of terror depends on the distance between the patient’s rectum and Los Angeles, but it is arguable that the phrase “bleeding started in the rectal area” is terrifying enough on its own.

Transcription Error: She is numb from her toes down

Alright ladies, if these are the problems that you are seeing the doctor for then you have officially lost all rights to make fun of guys about refusing to see doctors. We at least wait until that numbness reaches our ankles. Tough guys will wait until it hits the knees. Or else the doctor forgot to address the serious matter of toes growing out of a woman’s forehead.

Transcription Error: Social history reveals this 1 year old patient does not smoke or drink and is presently unemployed

On second thought, this might not be an error. The news is always talking about how fast kids are growing up these days, what with all the hormones put in our cheeseburgers and all. Maybe doctors are actually concerned about alcoholic chain smoking infants. Maybe this medical transcription is proof that we will finally see a baby born with a glorious mustache.

Transcription Error: Patient called and left word that he had expired last week

This patient wins the award for most courteous zombie of all time. Of course the doctor probably meant that the patient’s health insurance or something had expired, but a polite zombie apocalypse is a far more interesting theory.

Transcription Error: On the second day the knee was better, and on the third day it disappeared completely

Everybody has memories of falling down and scraping their knee when they were little. You would sit there and cry over what was a horrific injury in your mind, but actually barely qualified as a boo boo. It was at this time a supposedly funny uncle or dad would joke that they had to amputate. After all, if you don’t have the knee it won’t hurt anymore. This is what happens when somebody gives that funny uncle/dad a medical license.

Transcription Error: Discharge status: Alive but without permission

It is not unheard of for doctors to get a God complex since their jobs are literally life and death. It is a little weird to see one so blatant about his need to control everything. Most doctors would be glad to see a patient breathing, let alone healthy enough to leave the hospital. It sounds like this doctor wants to track down this patient and take away his clean bill of health with his bare hands.

Transcription Error: The patient is tearful and crying constantly. She also appears to be depressed

Sherlock Holmes is not only the world’s greatest detective, but also the world’s greatest physician. His bedside manner leaves a little to be desired, though.

This article was originally posted at  http://www.forkparty.com/17691/10-hilarious-medical-transcription-errors