Stephen Denick, national director of sales for Outsourcing Solutions Inc., recently published a short ‘buyer’s guide’ for Advance Web about partnering with an offshore medical transcription service. Below is a summary of his questions to consider when hiring an offshore medical transcription service:
- Economies of scale? Going overseas is a risk in itself, but the fact is your company could save money. Make sure your offshore partner has up-to-date technology, plenty of resources, proper quality assurance (QA), and good communication.
- How can the production process help me? Overseas transcriptionists are working while you are sleeping. Turnaround times can be faster offshore and new technologies such as speech recognition can ease the language barrier.
- What are their security safeguards? Make sure your MTSO has proper internet and computer safety guidelines in place. Also ask if they perform workstation audits to ensure operations are running smoothly.
- Will the work be done out of a central facility or via home-based transcription? Home-based transcription abroad is very different from here in the states. Make sure your MTSO has a central location where the transcribing is performed.
- Does the company sub-contract work out? Your MTSO should not sub-contract without your permission. Ask about the review process of documentation and how many times it is checked over before it gets to you.
- What is their technical competency? Ask you IT team to do a little investigative work to see what kinds of IT practices are in place overseas.
- How’s your communication with your vendor? Ultimately, if you cannot understand the person on the phone, do not sign up with the company. It is important that language barriers are kept to a minimum and that the people answering the phones are fluent in English.
Click here to read the entire article: Heading Offshore? Tips for Researching Your MTSO.
