What Turnaround Times Do Medical Transcription Outsourcing Companies Offer?

By Author: MTS Transcription Services
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This article attempts to answer the query, “What turnaround times do medical transcription outsourcing companies offer?” With respect to transcription work, turnaround is the duration of time that elapses between uploading of the audio files by the healthcare practice to when the finished transcripts are available for access by the same healthcare practice. Any delay in this aspect of transcription services can lead to delays in referrals. It can also negatively affect clinical decision making, patient care, starting of reimbursement procedures and finishing off of documentation for the purpose of risk management.

Medical Transcription Outsourcing Companies Offer Two Basic TATs

The two basic kinds of TAT that these service providers make available to clients are:

• Standard TAT – This varies between 12 hours to 36 hours depending on the company you are outsourcing to.

• Rush or STAT – This is faster than the standard and the duration again varies with company.

Factors Affecting TAT

Apart from the basic divisions discussed above, turnaround duration can vary when changes ...
... pertaining to the following factors occur:

• Number of staff – Whether done in-house or by a reliable medical transcription service provider, there are times when a shortage of staff is possible due to sickness or long leave cases. A situation such as this can cause delays.

• Skill and training of the transcriptionists – Appropriately trained and highly experienced medical transcriptionists would be faster at their job. If they have experience in handling a variety of customer requirements, this would further hasten their delivery time.

• Volume of work – For a healthcare practice, there are times when patient inflow is less and times when the inflow is too difficult to manage. This can cause a decrease or increase in the volume of dictations that need to be transcribed. When the workload increases, more time may be required to finish the job unless additional staff are recruited.

• Incorporation of advanced technology – The incorporation of superior technology plays an important part in meeting time commitments. When medical transcription outsourcing companies have features such as automatic audio file uploading, multiple accepted modes of dictation and delivery of prepared documents, easy access to dictations by medical transcriptionists and to finished transcripts by the healthcare practice’s staff, and good backup systems, turnaround can be cut down.

• Change in requirements – Changes in client requirements can cause a delay in delivering the finished work

• Nature of quality checks – A systematic and consistent method of quality control can help to speed up work completion.

• Client Expectations – The client may demand that the work be completed by a particular deadline. This deadline would have to be adhered to.

Urgent Projects Should Be Completed on Time

It can thus be concluded that medical transcription outsourcing companies offer different turnaround times depending on the number and quality of resources they possess. These companies may often be asked to complete projects urgently and they must do as requested to ensure client satisfaction. If a company always adheres to desired turnaround requirements, a good impression will be formed about that company. Healthcare practices will also want to maintain a long term relationship with that company.

Author Bio:

MTS Transcription Services (MTS) is an established medical transcription outsourcing company in the US, offering comprehensive transcription solutions for a wide range of clientele. MTS delivers quality and timely medical transcription services within quick turnaround time. We provide various turnaround time options including standard 24 hour TAT and STAT (2 hours, 4 hours or 6 hours) and more.