Right now some MTs are concerned because some work is being sent overseas, especially to India. These MTs fear that they may lose their jobs because there is not enough work to go around. Also, because the MTs in India charge such a low line rate (.03 cents per line) some MTs are afraid that the line rates in the USA will drop and they will lose money. These concerns have not proven to be the case. First of all, the work coming back from overseas is riddled with errors such as wrong words, grammatical errors, typos, and many misspellings. In most cases, an American MT must go through and edit the reports before they can be sent to a facility. So, let’s say a national MT service decided to try to “save” money by shipping some work overseas to be transcribed at .03 cents per line, and then they find that the work needs extensive editing, and they must pay an American MT .06 or more per line to edit the document. Now the service has spent at least .09 cents per line for that one document! It’s just not proving to be a cost effective way to do business after all. Secondly, new laws are going into effect all the time in regard to patient medical records. It may be the case in the future that laws are passed that make outsourcing confidential medical records illegal. Lastly, there is still plenty of MT work in the US for a good MT.
Another concern some MTs have is the advent of voice recognition software. This is software that allows the doctor to speak into a microphone and the software translates the voice into text. This is not widely used for many reasons. First, the equipment is expensive and takes time to “train” to the doctor’s specific voice. Secondly, many ESL dictators commonly mispronounce certain English syllables and sounds, and that would make voice recognition unusable. Lastly, no software can be sensitive enough to distinguish between sound-alike medical words like “Xanax” and “Zantac.” If voice recognition is ever perfected ten years in the future, MT editors would still be needed to edit the final documents.
There is a law called HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) which includes some provisions in the handling of patient medical records and the security of them. Basically, there is some confusion about how HIPAA guidelines will affect work at home MTs. Right now it is thought that simply password protecting your computer, using encryption software (will explain more on this later in the course), and locking up floppy disks that contain patient information in a file cabinet will be sufficient. You will learn much more about HIPAA in module 30.
MT services are switching over from the old “tape and transcriber” method of transcribing medical reports to using Wav files/Wav pedals and the Internet to send and receive dictation. This is a very efficient and inexpensive way of doing business! You will learn in our course all about how to use a WAV pedal to transcribe Wav files. Basically, in brief, a WAV file is a computer sound file that can be played on your computer using special software.
http://www.mtacc.net/articles.php#FutureofMedicalTranscription
