Become a Doctus Medical Transcriptionist

DOCTUS, a team of professional trainers, has come together with the
leaders of the MT industry to offer customized and relevant training
in medical transcription. This training is offered independent of
service agreements.

From Doctus Alumni

IAMR trains trainers

For the first time in the state, the commissionerate of intermediate education, Andhra Pradesh government, and the Indian Association of Medical Records Services (IAMR) have embarked on an initiative to introduce medical transcription as a vocational course in junior colleges.

Towards this direction, the commissionerate and the IAMR had jointly organised a 15-day pilot programme for training government junior college lecturers in the state in medical transcription, which concluded here on July 29.

Twenty seven lecturers – three each from nine government colleges and minority institutions in tier-II towns – have been selected for the all-paid programme with an intention to start a six-month course in their respective colleges. read more

Proofreading Tips(u)

The correct attitude for a Medical Transcriptionist should be one of independence and responsibility for his or her work. Medical Transcriptionists function with a minimum of direct supervision. The majority do have an immediate supervisor somewhere responsible for quality control. Working as a professional Medical Transcriptionist means to take pride in the accuracy and completeness of your work. A professional gains satisfaction from a job well done.

Excellent proofreading skills are critical for a Medical Transcriptionist. Proofreading is looking for mistakes of all types in a transcribed document and correcting them. The most common errors a Medical Transcriptionist will be looking for include:

Omission of important dictated words
Selecting the wrong English or medical word
Misspelling words
Typographical errors
Grammatical errors
Punctuation errors

Proofreading skills will improve with practice. You will know what your areas of weaknesses are as you proofread and find your errors. If you find that you miss few medical words, but misspell many English words, you can improve by paying particular interest in English words as you transcribe and proofread dictation.

Consider the following four-step method to help you achieve the best results from your proofreading:

1. Look words up in reference books as you encounter them. Dont wait until the end of the report. You will have forgotten how some of the words sounded. Search until you find and dont go any further in your medical transcribing until you find the words you get stumped on. Leave a blank if you exhaust all resources and still cannot find your word.
2. Briefly proofread what you transcribe as it appears on the screen of your word processor or the paper you are typing on. This will help you catch missed words and typographical errors as they occur. Print out your reports on paper if you are using a word processor. It is easier to proofread the printed report on paper than it is on the screen.
3. If you just cannot find a word, leave a blank of an appropriate length, according to how long or short the word sounds. Attach a flag (a flag is a sheet of paper clipped to the report or a sticky note placed on the report which identifies all blanks, which lines of the report they are located on, and what the dictated word sounded like to you.
4. Use a medical or English spellchecker as the final step in proofreading. Spellcheckers will not catch errors such as transcribing no instead of not or transcribing ilium instead of ileum.

Excellent proofreading skills come only after continual practice to perfect. Consider the following tips:

To avoid omitting important dictated words adjust the speed control on the transcriber unit and transcribe slowly to assure no dictated words are overlooked. Slowly increase your speed of the tape, which will increase transcription speed as you learn to keep up with the dictator.

The tape recording (if you are transcribing from a tape) does not perfectly reproduce the human voice. Sometimes the words and phrases sound garbled or something quite different from what they really are. A Medical Transcriptionist should never transcribe what he or she thinks they hear. You should transcribe only what makes sense in the context of the report. Careful word searching and careful attention to word definitions help the Medical Transcriptionist to avoid selecting the wrong English or medical word. The wrong medical word can convey a wrong diagnosis for a patient. The error can be carried in the patients permanent medical record and cause extreme havoc and chaos. The professional Medical Transcriptionist NEVER transcribes anything that does not make sense and/or cannot be verified in a reference book. In other words, dont just make up a word either just to fill in all the blanks. It is better to leave a blank.

Misspelling of medical and English words can be avoided by careful proofreading and using a spellchecker.

Typographical errors are usually the result of carelessness or attempts to type too fast rather than focusing on accuracy. Careful proofreading will eliminate typographical errors.

Grammatical errors are hard to catch while transcribing and must be identified through careful proofreading.

Punctuation errors can actually change the medical meaning of a sentence. Keep your punctuation references within easy reach.

(from Career Advice by Randy)

IAMR efforts to bring Kolkata industry together

from the latest mtindia newsletter

Ramakrishna Tummala, President IAMR and MD Worldtech will be
meeting with industry majors at Kolkata on Sunday, June 24. He
will be in Kolkata along with his team to commemorate the 1st
anniversary of the Worldtech Center of Excellence. Mr. Tummala has
been a pioneer in the efforts to get the Indian MT industry to grow
in dialog. He formalized his efforts with the industry in
Hyderabad at a meeting in July 2002 where Dr. Amit Chatterjee, SM
of MTIndia came and shared his understanding of the need for such a
forum at local, national and international levels. IAMR was formed
with 20 leading companies. Raghu Vasu of Transdyne, Ravi Chandran
and Srinivas Manne of ElicoBPO, Subhorup Dasgupta of Worldtech,
Venkateswar Rao of Vasavi Prosoft, along with the principals of
VasantScribe, CKAR, and other leaders took IAMR forward to become
an effective and formal networking platform for the industry.

IAMR activities have included training in HIPAA compliance, career
destination seminars by Peter Preziosi, AAMT, sharing best HR
practices, sharing best training practices, evolving uniform
recruitment and recognition systems, sharing vendor data and other
relevant data, sharing technology, workshops on yoga, art of
living, personality development and ergonomics, workshops for
senior and middle management, cultural events & sports events,
seminar on hedging foreign exchange risk by Nagesh Pydah of Bank of
India.

In a telephonic interview, Mr. Ramakrishna said that the two
challenges that the Indian MT Industry faces is lack of uniform
standards and availability of trained manpower.

"The danger of poor or erratic quality of service provided is one
that would adversely affect the whole industry, most so the leading
players who invest heavily in implementation of quality policies
and processes. The industry has only recently been able to shake
off its image as a low cost but high risk (in terms of accuracy of
transcripts and security of data) offshoring destination and we
need to do all we can to prevent the India MT brand from being
tarnished." he said.

"Uniform training, certification and compensation coupled with good
HR practices are keys to successful retention. The two words every
CEO dreads are attrition and poaching. The only way out is to
increase the quality of entry level MTs and to invest in training
and retraining. In the context of a 40-rupee dollar,
non-sustainable costs need to be addressed urgently in order for
all
of us to survive and profit. Career aspirations and earnings need
to be judiciously matched to create a win-win situation for the
business as well as the workers."

for more go to http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/MTIndia/message/207

First Anniversary of Worldtech Kolkata

Worldtech Center of Excellence First Anniversary June 24, 2007

TV9 show on Medical Transcription

A feature on Telugu Satellite TV (TV9) on Medical Transcription featuring Indian MTs and MTSOs.