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