Medical Transcription is one of the fastest growing fields in health care. Medical
Transcriptionists are in demand in Western countries especially in the US where the
entire healthcare industry is based on insurance and detailed medical records are needed
for processing insurance claims. Medical transcription could be one of the speedy
growing IT enabled service in India also, with the rapid change in the outlook in Indian
healthcare and privatization of the insurance sector. India provides an ideal location for
conducting medical transcription with the large population of educated English speaking
people and the comparative low cost which encourages companies abroad to outsource
their work to the Indian Medical Transcription field.
Medical transcription is an interesting and challenging career. It is the process whereby
one accurately and swiftly transcribes medical records dictated by doctors and others,
including history and physical reports, clinic notes, office notes, operative reports,
consultation notes, discharge summaries, letters, psychiatric evaluations, laboratory
reports, x-ray reports and pathology reports. M.T. or Medical Transcriptionist is a person
who assists physicians and specialty surgeons usually by transcribing, formatting, and
proof reading their dictated medically oriented report of a patient's health history. This
dictation covers pretty much everything that takes place between the health care provider
and the patient. Usually, the information dictated by doctors is recorded either into tape
or onto digital voice processing systems. The process of medical transcription is
transferring this information using word processing. Transcription services range from
small, one-person home-based business to sophisticated, high-tech corporations which
employ transcriptionists. Some medical transcription services now employ both 'on-site'
and home-based medical transcriptionists. Medical transcription services serve client
hospitals throughout the nation and abroad.
In India there was a boom in this industry couple of years back with a lot of companies
and training institutes entering this field. Most companies except a few could not survive
due to lack of proper training and understanding of this comparatively new concept in
India. By improving the work standards and quality of service, India has a wide scope for
capturing the huge clientele in the US and provide employment opportunities to the huge
mass of English speaking and computer literate people in the country. The success of the
surviving companies proves that Medical transcription can hold a vital link in altering the
Indian job scenario.