Consider how you measure transcription
HIM Connection, September 7, 2004
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If you outsource some or all of your transcription, insist on a clear definition and formula so you can confirm charges, recommends Claudia Tessier, RHIA, CAE, former CEO of the American Association of Medical Transcriptionists (AAMT) and current executive director of Mobile Healthcare Alliance. "One company's line is not another's. The same goes for character, page, and even minute."
Some facilities measure transcription by line, some by character, some by minute. But multitasking transcriptionists, new technologies, and other factors play a role in which measurement is the best for you and your staff. "It's not so much whether you measure by minute or character, but that you have a clear definition of how you measure," says Tessier.
How you measure your transcription often depends on the technology you're working with, says Jefferson Howe, CMT, president of AAMT. On some systems, a character count includes spaces, bold keys, and any other keys the transcriptionist touches. Some systems allow a count of only "black" characters.
"For systems that can't count so specifically, there are gross lines, net lines, ASCII characters, or converting minutes to lines," he says. But that's where measurements can really start to differ. "There are so many different variables that can be involved. Some people say one minute of dictation averages 10 lines of transcription and others call it 12.5," she says.
If your transcriptionists' daily responsibilities include tasks other than straight transcription, it may be more practical to track something other than lines, says Linda Amato, CMT, McHenry Medical Group in Modesto, CA.
For example, if some reports are generated through speech recognition with transcriptionists doing the editing, you may not be able to measure that production in the same way as other transcription.
This excerpt is adapted from the newsletter Medical Records Briefing.
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