What Is Medical Transcription?

Medical transcription involves the process of converting voice recorded reports, as dictated by healthcare professionals, into text. Transcription can be carried out in other niches such as legal, but within medical is carried out by doctors, dentists, nurses etc.

In years gone by, companies offering medical transcription services would provide a client with basic recording equipment that generally included a microphone. The client would then activate the recording device and speak into the mic to supply the data that needed to be transcribed. As and when company offering the transcription service would pick up the recording, transcribe the recording, and return it in typed form to the customer. Many medical transcription services still offer this option, though other methods of collecting and delivering the data are now available.

It is becoming popular these days for medical providers to carry this out via digital dictation where they send their dictation by digital voice files which utilises a transcription method referred to as speech or voice recognition.

The role of carrying out the transcription is known as a Medical Transcriptionist (MT), who will carry out their work using a Medical Transcriber. As opposed to handwritten notes, they will convert the dictated medical record into a typewritten format.

When a patient pays their doctor a visit, they will chat to them about their medical history as well as any current symptoms - the doctor will make notes on these. Once complete, they will then use a voice recording device to dictate the notes taken. In turn, this will be sent to a central point at the hospital/surgery where it will be picked by the MT, they will then convert this to the required format ready when the doctor next needs to refer to it.

These days, it is likely that the role of the MT will be outsourced. Obviously there are concerns here for the quality of the transcription and patient privacy - because of this, a number of digital dictation experts make their services available and are able to offer medical secretaries who possess a skill set which covers all medical disciplines.