MTIA: 2010 Year in Review

The Medical Transcription Industry Association recently published a 2010 Industry Review on its web site. For the benefit of our medical transcription readers, we have included MTIA’s review below:

Membership

  • Hosted successful 21st Annual Conference, appropriately themed “Change: New Bonds. New Purpose.” in Daytona Beach, with over 200 attendees and 30 exhibitors
  • Responded to membership by reducing 2011 conference pricing structure, making it more financially accessible to small and mid-sized MTSOs
  • Awarded Sten-Tel, Inc., the MTIA Industry Support Award
  • Approved name change of Clinical Documentation Industry Association (CDIA) to more accurately reflect the rapidly changing healthcare documentation landscape that is no longer limited to traditional dictation-transcription, thereby increasing the relevance of the association in the health IT sector and positioning it to attract new membership
  • Launched new electronic Health eBrief: Clinical Documentation Newswire in November, offering members greater diversity of industry sector news and efficiency of delivery

Advocacy

  • Maximized the expertise of the Dewey Square Group and MTIA resources, eliminating the guesswork of how to tackle policy issues, resulting in a high-impact coordinated effort
  • Met with the offices of 47 Republican and 46 Democratic federal legislators during the 5th Annual AHDI-MTIA Advocacy Summit in March 2010, encouraging them to support efforts to have the dictation-transcription process acknowledged in the “meaningful use” regulations
  • Gained the participation of over 600 AHDI and MTIA members who sent letters to their legislators in support of their colleagues who went to Capitol Hill
  • Submitted testimony requesting Congressional support of our key roles and challenges, which has raised awareness about industry related issues and will continue to make the case for the value of narrative and our risk management contribution as rules and regulations around certification and future iterations of meaningful use are crafted
  • Bolstered legislative relationships and better educated key congressional members on the work that the medical transcription industry does and the challenges it faces, with congressional visits hosted by members (MedQuist and Transcend Services, Inc.)

Sponsorship

  • Joined Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity in promoting the Power of 10 campaign, pledging a commitment to ongoing year-round advocacy.

Board

  • Elected 2011 Board of Directors: Robin Daigh, VP, Marketing and Business Development, MD-IT; Dale Kivi, Director of Business Development, Future Net Technologies Corp.; Lee Tkachuk, CEO, Keystrokes Transcription Services, Inc.; Nick van Terheyden, MD, Chief Medical Information Officer, Nuance; and Linda Yaniszewski, CEO & President, ExecuScribe, Inc.
  • Hosted CDIA Vision Framework Building session at Q4 meeting, focusing on reenergizing and strategizing CDIA’s vision, mission, and values to augment membership engagement and expand growth opportunities
  • Held joint meeting with AHDI and AHIMA executive board members to explore future collaborative ventures and potential for promoting mutual efforts

Brand Building

  • Moved the needle forward in growing the visibility of the industry sector among policymakers, regulators, and key healthcare associations
  • Released the Ethical Best Practices Manual for the Healthcare Documentation Sector, Speech Recognition Adoption Guide, and Healthcare Documentation Quality Assessment and Management Best Practices, in partnership with AHDI
  • Linda Yaniszewski featured in Healthcare Financial Management Association’s supplement Your Outsourcing Strategy as a result of the Chicago media tour
  • Joint CDIA and AHDI executive leadership met with U.S. Small Business Administration officials to further efforts in small business development, job training, and competitiveness of workers
  • Developed CDIA Strategic Marketing Plan for implementation in 2011

AHDI Offers Monthly Webinars

Every month, the Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI) offers educational webinars. Two that the association is encouraging its members to attend are:

Your Association, Your Benefits: An online presentation that details AHDI member benefits and how to take advantage of them.

Steps to Credentialing: A web presentation that explains in detail how to become credentialed.

There are even more complimentary webinars to choose from on AHDI’s Online Store under “Meetings/Webinars”.

Nuance Releases Speech Transcription SDK for iOS and Android Apps

Per Mashable,

“Nuance, the maker of popular speech recognition apps such as Dragon Dictation, is releasing the Dragon Mobile SDK to members of the Nuance Mobile Developer Program. The SDK will enable app makers to add speech transcription capabilities to their iOS and Android applications.

The SDK is free of charge and lets developers add speech-to-text translation capabilities in eight different languages, as well as text-to-speech functionality in more than 35 languages.

Nuance’s suite of Dragon Mobile applications is widely recognized as best-in-class when it comes speech transcription, and the SDK is already being used by companies such as Ask.com. The SDK should help robust speech-enabled apps become more prevalent, and we look forward to seeing what developers can dream up.

Nuance has been working on speech-based services since the early ’90s. The veteran company has made a number of acquisitions in recent years, including startups like Jott and SpinVox.”

Medical Transcription Outsourcing – Benefits for Physicians

MTS Transcription Services (MTS) recently issued a press release on how medical transcription outsourcing is beneficial to physicians.

The press release listed out a number of medical transcription outsourcing services features, namely:

  • Automated electronic report disctribution
  • Document flow management system
  • Electronic medical record solution
  • Web-based file transfer
  • Digital handheld recorders
  • Customizing and maintaining EMR
  • Secured FTP (File Transfer protocol) with an FTP software package
  • Retrieval of completed records using a secure VPN (Virtual Private Network)

In addition, the press release touched upon multiple benefits that medical transcription services offer physicians:

  • Reduces overhead costs
  • Quick turnaround time
  • Complete data security
  • Savings in costs – up to 40-60%
  • Assured data quality
  • High level of accuracy
  • Confidentiality of data
  • Reduce capital costs of infrastructure
  • Availability of services 24/7
  • Improve office effeciency
  • Ability to create backup copies of patient records

NOTE: If the MTSO works with a medical transcription factoring firm, the medical transcription service can offer extended payment terms to the physicians they serve.

Medical Transcription Invoice Factoring Case Study

The medical transcription factoring specialists at PRN Funding recently invited one of our current medical transcription clients to “spill the beans: in a tell-all interview about how PRN Funding helped her MT service more than double in size. Although it’s posted on PRN Funding’s web site, we also included a copy of it on The Factoring Blog for all of our MTSO readers:

Launching a New Company
In May 2009, Terri Davis started Clear Choice Transcription, a diverse transcription company specializing in the medical field. Having spent 13 and a half years in the industry, Davis knew she would need help managing cash flow to meet payroll and keep vendors happy until the client payments started coming in. She also knew standard financing was not an option. This is when she decided to look into special medical transcription factoring.

“When we launched, our largest client was giving us overflow work only, and some of the smaller clients who were paying very quickly were not enough to fund payroll for future growth. Similar to other business owners in this industry, I did not have a lot of tangible assets to offer a bank as collateral. That’s a good thing in that there’s not a lot you need to purchase, but it made it very difficult to get standard financing,” says Davis.


A Flexible Factoring Lender
Clear Choice Transcription’s flexibility in working with their customers gives them the ability to work with different size medical practices, as well as clinics and hospitals. Clear Choice offers differing pricing structures and domestic and overseas transcription options, works within varying Electronic Medical Record (EMR) programs, and with different dictation styles and templates. And so they appreciated a lender who was flexible working with them.

That flexibility, and expertise, is what sold Davis on PRN Funding, even though they considered other funding partners.

“They were very knowledgeable in the medical transcription industry, and the information I received was very impressive. From the very beginning, they worked with me whenever we needed something a little different. For instance, we had to break a large client’s invoice down into different parts due to issues with the client’s billing system. Instead of simply saying no, PRN Funding immediately presented a very easy factoring solution and it worked out very well,” she says. “And I genuinely like the people at PRN Funding. Their response time is great and they made me feel we were on the right track in partnering with them.”

PRN has an intimate knowledge of the medical transcription industry that helps them help their clients.

“We’re unique in the medical transcription factoring industry in that before I started PRN Funding I worked for the nation’s largest medical transcription company,” says founder Phil Cohen. “So I know the industry inside and out and we have a good number of clients in the space. Having worked in the industry for such a long time, my account managers and I bring a lot of expertise to the table.”

Stabilizing Cash Flow
“In this business, as I am sure with most, without cash flow you’re dead in the water. You can’t pay your people, you can’t move forward, and growth is most times impossible,” Davis says. Medical transcription financing was a great option for Clear Choice Transcription, allowing Davis to bring in the people she needed in order to take on more work while continuing to meet payroll obligations. ”

Terri’s largest client was having some issues with their accounts payable system, getting invoices processed, and there were invoices that were aging out past 60 days,” Cohen recalls. “She was stressed about the fees involved with medical transcription funding, but it was nothing compared to the stress she would have felt if she wasn’t able to make payroll.”


Quadrupling Business Growth
Medical transcription factoring with PRN Funding gave Davis the stable cash flow she needed to quadruple Clear Choice billings in just a nine-month period.

“Thanks to PRN Funding, we had the cash flow we needed to bring in enough people to convert this very large client into a full service account, instead of just the overflow work we had been receiving. That was a huge growth for us. It also helped us bring on new clients, too,” Davis explains.

In the beginning Clear Choice had 25 medical transcriptionists in the U.S. and an offshore vendor. Today, they have 110 medical transcriptionists in the U.S. and about 150 on their offshore team. In a very short time frame, Clear Choice Medical Transcription had grown dramatically.

Value-Add: Peace of Mind
To Davis, knowing she has PRN Funding behind her gives her a secret weapon in the competition for new clients.

“It’s the security of having them there. If there’s a client we’re chasing after and their terms need to be extended to 45 or 60 days, knowing in the back of my mind that I have access to the cash flow immediately after invoicing gives me a very big bargaining chip with the prospect. It’s very helpful in bidding on new clients, to know that we can accommodate their needs without over-extending ourselves.”

As an ongoing PRN Funding client, Davis is excited about the future.

“In this industry, if you don’t have a huge bankroll in the beginning it’s very difficult to get started. We were lucky to find PRN Funding in the beginning, and I’m looking forward to continued growth,” Davis says.

How Medical Facilities Can Establish Reality-Based Turnaround Times

“When it comes to establishing realistic turnaround-time (TATs), clearly defined expectations are crucial.” That’s the mantra of Elizabeth S. Roop’s article in the November 22 edition of For the Record Magazine. Her article discusses the importance for medical transcription service organizations (MTSOs) to achieve an appropriate balance between speed, quality and consistency with their TAT service-level agreements.

Ms. Roop points out a number of things for medical providers to consider when contracting with an outsourced medical transcription vendor, namely:

  1. High quality, ability to meet TATs and affordability are all pieces of the same triangle. Skimping on any of the three will affect the triangle’s properties. For example, if a hospital demands an MTSO have produce high quality and high speed records, then it must be willing to pay a high premium for those services.
  2. Be sure to take into account any unique medical facility characteristics (i.e. type of records, frequency, required skill levels,  etc.).
  3. Prepare and negotiate ahead of time to handle staffing fluctuations and possible overflow situations. Two scenarios where volume fluctuations are hard for MTSOs absorb are: (1) When a hospital chooses to outsource all of its medical transcription, leaving no in-house staff to pick up the slack; and (2) When a hospital uses an MTSO to supplement in-house overflow. (NOTE: Keep in mind, in either of these situations, an MTSOs cash flow can dramatically change. Receivables can take longer to come in even though the work levels are increasing. One way to counter this situation is to use a medical transcription factoring firm.)
  4. Busy clinicians can also alter turnaround times. It’s important for medical facilities to establish proactive relationships with their clinicians to help avoid nasty surprises and ensure that clinicians are aware of how the quality and timeliness of their dictation impacts the speed with which they receive reports.

In addition to the author’s suggestions, medical transcription industry experts suggest the following tips on how to manage TAT:

  1. Establish whether medical transcription work can be outsourced offshore and make any necessary accommodations to ensure TAT can be met if it will not be.
  2. Clearly define penalties for nonperformance  as well as any “cure” period during which service can be brought back up to par. Also consider specific rewards for outstanding performance.
  3. Conduct due diligence, including checking MTSO references with case mix and TATs similar to what will be expected.
  4. Select an MTSO appropriately sized for the expected demand and ensure it has the resources to handle fluctuations.

AHDI’s Vitals eNewsletter Changes to eBrief

Beginning in January 2011, AHDI and MTIA members will begin receiving a weekly eBrief publication instead of Vitals.

The new eBrief promises to deliver the same kinds of medical transcription and healthcare documentation industry news that Vitals did, including:

  • MT industry news and trends
  • Information on regulatory issues
  • Privacy and security updates
  • Mergers and acquisitions announcements
  • Emerging technology updates
  • Much more!

Keep in mind that those medical transcriptionists and MTSOs who are not members of MTIA or AHDI can also freely subscribe to the new eBrief.

AHDI Members Contact Info:
800-982-2182 or ahdi@ahdionline.org

MTIA Members Contact Info:
800-543-MTIA or mtia@mtia.com

Healthcare Documentation – Plexus Announces Best of the Best

From mid-July to mid-August, AHDI released a survey to find out the best of the best in the healthcare documentation industry. The results were printed in the November 2010 issue of Plexus magazine. The medical transcription invoice funding specialists at PRN Funding took the liberty to summarize the findings below:

Best Word Expander Software or Tool:
Instant Text

Best Medical Dictionary:
Stedman’s Medical Dictionary

Best Drug Book or Pharmaceutical Reference:
Quick Look Drug Book

Best Overall Book or Printed Reference:
The Book of Style for Medical Transcription, 3rd Edition

Best Electronic Reference (CD or Web Service):
Google

Best Clinical Medicine Website:
WebMD

Best English Language Website:
Merriam-Webster

Best Online Source for CECs:
AHDI

Best Industry Newsletter:
Vitals n-Newsletter

Best Medical Transcription Community/Social Networking Website:
Facebook

Best Provider of Medical Transcription Equipment:
Transcription Gear

Best Medical Transcription Employer:
ExecuScribe

Question: Do you agree/disagree with the survey results?

Mobile Dictation Tools Gaining Ground in Healthcare

Robert N. Mitchell wrote an interesting article in the November 8th edition of For the Record Magazine in which he discussed the rise of mobile dictation in the healthcare industry.

With the government urging HIT adoption, there’s been a gradual change in physician documentation habits. Moreover, physicians are being asked more frequently to use electronic health records (EHR) instead of narrative dictation to dictate. However, using an EHR takes twice as long to accomplish because physicians have to “leave the exam room, find a computer, log in to it, load an application, search for the patient, find a template, fill out the template–all the while hoping that the template covers all the information that has to be documented.”

Some physicians combat the lag time by taking notes and entering all of the day’s the information into EHRs at the end of the day. However, when this is done from memory, it increases the risk of incomplete or inaccurate EHRs. Enter mobile dictation apps.

Good Shepherd Medical Center (Longview, TX) recently developed an iPhone app for its physicians to view patients’ clinical and demographic information. Using the app allows doctors to “see which patients need attention and to view lab values, medication lists and radiology reports” all from their smart phone.

3M Health Information Systems developed a mobile app that interfaces with scheduling systems and patient admissions, discharge and transfer systems. Doctors can use their app to “dictate notes, view patient lists…and access current patient information.” In addition, 3M’s app allows physicians to dictate directly into a smartphone during a patient encounter. The completed dictation is then automatically sent for speech recognition and then into the medical transcription system.

Emdat has also developed an app that allow doctors to download their patient schedule and record their dictation directly into an iPhone and/or Windows Mobile platforms. In addition, physicians can review the completed dictation and use electronic signatures from their mobile devices.

Finally, BayScribe has developed mobile dictation apps for the iPhone (both 3 and 4), iPad, Windows Mobile devices, and Blackberry, and Android is on its way.

BayScribe’s IT manager Dean Ganskop,  said: “This takes an entire narrative from a doctor and the engine parses out discrete reportable transcription [DRT] information such as allergies or diagnosis list.”

As exciting as these new mobile dictation technologies are, Claudia Tessier (RHIA, MEd, president of mHealth Initiative and former CEO of the American Association for Medical Transcription) insists that the need to review a dictated report will never go away.

Q: What do you think about mobile dictation devices?

Nuance Launches Speech-Enabled MT Services Offering

According to SpeechTechMag.com, Nuance Communications launched an outsourced medical transcription services offering that expands Nuance’s clinical documentation solutions portfolio.

According to the article, “Nuance Transcription Services combines Nuance’s proprietary eScription speech recognition platform with its global medical transcription and editing services team…[It] also draws upon strengths and resources from two recently acquired leaders in medical transcription outsourcing, Outsourcing Solutions and Encompass Medical Transcription.”

Click here to read the entire article: Nuance Launches Speech Enabled Medical Transcription Service Offering.

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