The Need Dictation Options Quality Standards Quality Assurance Procedures Turnaround Time of less than 24 hours Human Resources Line Count

The Need

The quality, timeliness and confidentiality of medical documentation - including transcription - is more important today than ever before. At the same time, a variety of market forces are impacting the ways in which medical transcription is conducted, managed and delivered.

The advent of government regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) coupled with increasingly stringent insurance company requirements today are driving the need for more efficient, accurate and secure medical transcription. Under HIPAA, Transcription service providers must implement technology and business processes to ensure the security and confidentiality of patient information, and establish an audit trail of all those who have accessed this information.

Meanwhile, internal trends including budget cuts on capital expenses, staff reductions, and the shortage of qualified transcriptionists continue to mire the ability of hospitals and medical practices to provide timely and quality transcription. As a result, an increasing number of facilities opt to outsource medical transcription.

Digitrans software and services offer total control over the entire transcription process -from dictation to transcription to records management. Digitrans enables hospitals and medical practices to not only achieve full HIPAA compliance and streamline transcription processing and management, but to realize substantial savings. Because all information can be accessed via standard Internet connections using existing hardware and systems, there is no capital investment.

Digitrans has developed its infrastructure, hardware and software architecture with security as the paramount concern. From state-of-the-art encryption technologies, redundant architectures and security monitoring to disaster prevention and recovery measures, Digitrans solutions are designed and engineered to meet the rigid standards of HIPAA compliance

We keep it simple for your physicians by adjusting our systems to your physicians' preferences. Digitrans offers a variety of dictation methods to accommodate our clients' practices, including Digitrans supplied dictation equipment or facility owned dictation equipment. Our options include:

Standard Telephone

Cellular Telephone

DVR (Digital Voice Recorder)

Digitrans guarantees quality levels of more than 98 or better for transcription accuracy. In addition, we warrant:

	Transcription documents will contain all required components and information including Headers, Footers, and Dictation body.
	Transcription reports will have the proper structure, format, content, spelling and grammar.
	Transcribed reports will accurately reflect the meaning intended by the dictator yet may be interpreted and edited by the transcriptionist in accordance with particular client requirements.
	The receipt of transcribed reports will adhere to contracted turnaround times.
	Transcribed reports will be created according to AAMT's Book of Style, unless client has specified differently.

Digitrans commits to the quality standards set by the American Association of Medical Transcription (AAMT) and utilizes the AAMT scoring process of variable point deductions depending on error type. Each type of error is totaled by the number of incidences and deducted from the 100-point beginning. A report with 2 Medical Content errors (1 point each) and 1 Punctuation error (1/4 point) would have 2.25 points deducted from the initial 100 for a final score of 97.75, below the Digitrans guarantee of 98.

The Quality Assurance procedure is well set includes quality assurance editing as part of the contracted line fee. For new clients, 100% of jobs are fully edited by our knowledgeable QA editors until grades of 98 and higher are consistently achieved on all report types. Our experience shows that two weeks of 100% editing are usually sufficient to achieve dependable, 98% results. Grammar, punctuation and medical terminology are included in QA editing. Account Specialists verify formatting and report types.

Digitrans believes that turnaround time should be guaranteed. Consistently delivering contracted turnaround times requires corporate-wide commitment and the technological infrastructure to manage the entire transcription process. Digitrans electronically delivers each transcribed report to the client before or within the defined turnaround time specified for each particular report type. We define turnaround time from the time a dictation is received in the Digitrans transcription environment until the finished transcription is electronically delivered back. We are so confident of our ability to meet turnaround times that the software we provide allows client personnel to view turnaround times online for each Digitrans transcribed report.

Typical turnaround arrangements are listed below, but are customized to meet the requirements of each client. The Usual Turnaround time is less than 24 hours
Because Digitrans has a common transcription platform, we can automatically route work to any available Digitrans transcriptionist seamlessly and securely.

The most valuable asset with Digitrans is the core team of medical transcriptionists and systems professionals. We derive our strength from combining the expertise of experienced, well trained, responsible, and dedicated medical language specialists with creative and innovative Information Technology professionals. To ensure that our employees continue to succeed, we have created a work environment that fosters personal growth, professional achievement and unlimited opportunities to contribute to the future and direction of a growing company. Digitrans has on board a team of Doctors working in the quality assurance department.

Digitrans employs the most highly qualified English-fluent MTs who serve our clients as full-time employees. Unlike alternative services, Digitrans does not employ part-time workers. Instead, we recruit and train full-time dedicated medical Transcriptionists who work in our modern secure facilities in India to produce the best quality MT service in the industry.

Digitrans is a team of 100 qualified professionals with a minimum experience of 1 year and maximum of 5 years. We also have reserve pool of Transcriptionists, Proofers and Doctors to meet any project requirement.

Within the transcription industry there are many different approaches to line counting. Various line counting methods produce significantly different results and can dramatically affect the final customer invoice. Comparing transcription fees per line, as bid by different companies can be very misleading if competing companies use different line counting methods. Unfortunately, Hospital directors must search deeper and investigate both fees per transcribed line and which line counting method is used.

What initially sounds simple ("We charge 12 cents per line" for instance) is complicated by:

	Visible keystrokes
	Hidden keystrokes, such as formatting with bold, underline, space bar, etc.
	Function keys
	Macro characters
	Headers
	Footers
	Any character on a line defines a line
	Total visible printed characters in any form divided by 65
	"Setup Fees" per report
	Other vague formulas, charges, or rates

We recommend examining all price quotations in detail. Healthcare facilities and transcription service providers often misinterpret or adapt the closest attempt to an industry standard, the AAMT Line Counting Method. Our research when counting the exact same report using three different methods shows that the total line count for the same report can vary by as much as 30%. Digitrans Account Executive will gladly provide further detail.

Our Digitrans Proven technology allows HIM managers to verify invoices based upon what is actually printed on the transcribed documents. In fact, Digitrans provides a report along with invoice to managers to assist facilities in auditing our billing methodologies. Using our simplest method, manually counting characters in a report and dividing by 65, will provide the number of billable lines.