Speech recognition technology has been threatening to eliminate traditional medical transcription jobs for several decades now. However, the reality of the situation is that, while voice recognition technology certainly has grown in importance in the healthcare industry, it is nowhere near being capable of replacing a traditional medical transcriptionist. At home medical transcription jobs are as plentiful as ever and the future of medical transcription is extremely bright.
But the one thing that has happened as a consequence of speech recognition technology development is that the role of some medical transcriptionists has been transformed to a fairly large degree. By and large, most medical transcriptionists still transcribe the old fashioned way: they listen to a physician dictated sound file and transcribe the report more or less word for word. As voice recognition gains traction, the starting point for an at home medical transcriptionist is increasingly a rough draft of a document that has been produced by voice recognition software.
As a general rule, voice recognition software is able to produce an output that is perhaps somewhere between 60% to 80% correct - assuming the physician is a good dictator. The problem of course, is that only a trained medical transcriptionist is qualified to determine where the errors may lie in the draft medical report. It is of paramount importance that each rough document be thoroughly reviewed and edited by a highly skilled medical transcriptionist. The integrity of our healthcare system relies on correct information being provided to physicians who are dealing with patients and making decisions on their behalf. An inaccurate medical records file can spell disaster for a patient and cause extreme frustration to the healthcare delivery system.
In time, more and more of the voice dictation files produced by physicians will be processed through speech recognition software. This will force the current pool of medical transcriptionists to retool their skill sets. Instead of listening and transcribing verbatim, the medical transcriptionist of the future will likely be listening and editing a document that comes up on a computer screen in an edit mode.
Sophisticated technology is certainly bringing efficiency to the medical transcription industry, but the need for quality work at home medical transcriptionists and work at home medical record editors will live on and continue to grow well into the future. In fact there has never been a more opportune time to train to become a medical transcriptionist!
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