Medical Transcription and Its Future

The new Obama care has got many people thinking about what could be the future of medical transcription industry. With doctors using the evolved technology like voice reorganization, dictation and digital devices, its not far fetched that a generic demand for medical transcription skills will greatly reduce as costs will reduce heavily by use of modern technology. So will machine eat up mans job? Or perhaps it’s not how we think.

Before we make any assumption there are few facts we need to look on.

History has proved it that when automation enters the regular and mundane then people have to move up to more complex and analytical works. This is also true in the field of medical transcription. Currently medical transcriptionists transcribe dictations and they work with various computer software programs to create reports but with voice recognition software and automated transcription regular transcription services may become obsolete but this doesn’t mean demand for medical transcriptionists will go away. They may be required to provide editing services, review documents, report analysis that can’t be done completely by machines. The human element of data processing and editing will still exist. There will also be a need to implement and manage electronic medical records and technology upgrades. Patient data management and healthcare analytics will also become a crucial part of medical transcription.

Obama healthcare also aims at more changes in Health Insurance Portability and Accountability rules (HIPAA) which would require following better standards in health care. Hence the idea with the new digital shift on health data is not extinction of medical transcription service but rather a transformation into different sets of services by enhancing and capitalizing on current skills. Medical transcription services have to undergo tremendous change and be proactive in providing innovative solutions for the new medical requirements

Home Care Staffing To Become More Expensive After New Labor Laws

No minimum wage or overtime after working for 12 hours. This is the plight of approximately 2.5 million health care aides after the amended labor law of 1974. Though it might be a dictate of those times, but right now it’s in complete contrast to home healthcare service industry which doubled to $55 billion between 2001 and 2009.

The fact is 80 million baby boomers are aging fast and health industry will continue to grow further. But the benefit of this doesn’t seem to reach the home care givers who are providing an important service to the society. Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) ensures that every other employee in the US receives minimum wages and over time pay, this includes nursing home workers who perform same functions and duties in nursing home. But home health care aides are left out of the ambit even though they work for more then 12 hours a day and some times even on week ends.

Looking at this stark inequity in comparison to raising health care industry Obama administration has announced that the FLSA law would be revised to provide home healthcare workers with guaranteed minimum wage and overtime allowance like rest of the industry.

Though ethical and logical the new amendment may sound but the ripples of it will be felt in the industry and disturb the regular business pattern. Many are already considering offsetting the cost of overtime by raise in price. This would mean high price tag for people with disabilities and senior citizens who live with limited income.

A prudent thought from home care companies would be to change the business models in such a way that it takes care of needs of home healthcare aides and at same time not put this extra burden on its clients. This can be done through smart business solution such as off shoring to a quality HIPAA compliant medical transcription company that can provide specialized services for non critical activities and managing electronic medical records and healthcare analytic in an affordable price and at the same time can lead to value added services which can add to the business revenues thus mitigating any loss from the changed laws.