subject: How To Determine The Right Electronic Medical Record System For Your Practice [print this page] "Earn thousands of dollars a month being a medical transcriptionist from your own home!" reads the email and others like it attracting many career-seeking individuals into the occupation of medical transcription. It is true that transcribing medical records for a hospital or doctor's practice can provide a good living for someone providing a valuable service for your practice.
However, it is important to make sure that the medical transcription service you use to produce the records needed by your practice are of the highest possible quality for use in diagnosing and treating and following the progress of your patients. When looking into the various electronic medical record systems available to you, you may feel that cost is the most important factor. But more important is the quality of the work.
Make sure that the system provides ease of use by both you and the transcriptionist and editors using the system, as well as the employees who will be retrieving the records for your use. If voice recognition is used, procedures that allow for editing and correction of records both by the system managers and your practitioners must be put into place so that the record is the most accurate and useful in its final form.
Also, security is an important consideration. With the Health Information Privacy and Portability Act, well-known to transcriptionists as HIPAA, many legal safeguards of the accessibility of medical records to prevent unauthorized use must be taken into consideration to ensure the confidentiality of your patient's medical information. Be careful because this is one of the things from which malpractice suits can result.
Finally, be sure that an adequate number of transcriptionists and other health information workers with sufficient knowledge of your specialty or field are working on the system at any one time to ensure that the record you need will be ready for your use when you need it in a timely and useful manner to help you make the most effective healthcare decisions.
Also, it is in the best interests of both you, your patients and your practice that your electronic medical record system is treating your transcriptionists and record department workers well, that they work in comfortable environments with adequate reference and educational materials and resources so that they will produce the best quality of electronic medical record for your practice.
