Brett from iMedX Australia stopped by to answer: “What is Medical Transcription?”
What is Medical Transcription?
Just in case you haven’t been able to attend one of the CanScribe course demonstrations, here is an audio file of a question and answer period with Brett Cooper of iMedX Australia. Brett sat with us to answer the question: “What is Medical Transcription?” This is a really great resource for anyone researching Medical Transcription / Healthcare Documentation as a career option.
If you have any questions about this, please contact our admissions department at 1-800-466-1535.
All of your Medical Transcription questions that were answered by Brett are written below for your convenience.
In the example of a Cardiologist: a patient goes to a General Practitioner (GP), the GP then refers the patient to the Cardiologist for tests. The Cardiologist will perform the tests and then dictate what happened with the patient. This is where the Medical Transcriptionist comes in; they type it out and then send the report back to the Cardiologist and the family if requested.
You have to be disciplined and if you are checking your Facebook page every few minutes, that will affect your earning potential. Now on that note, working from home allows you to take brain breaks without your boss bothering you! With iMedX Australia you start out as an Intern, where you are paid to be trained. This process generally lasts around two weeks and then you are transitioned to a Junior pay level. After your quality reaches a high enough level and your productivity is great enough, you can then move into a Senior pay position. This usually takes about two to six weeks. You can move into the Senior level faster if you can increase your productivity faster. With us, it takes about one month, to six weeks to gain a steady income on a consistent basis.
Currently, our top performers earn between $4000 and $5000 Canadian per month. The average with iMedX Australia is between $2000 and $4000. Now, the more productive you are, the more you can earn. If you want to work full-time and you are very productive, reaching the $4000 to $5000 per month is very realistic. The reason the average is between $2000 and $4000 is that many Medical Transcription / Healthcare Documentation Specialists work part-time and therefore earn less.
iMedX Australia has MT/HDSs in North America and Australia, so in short: no. All of our teams have Skype groups to contact each other with and answer questions for each other. All of the MT/HDSs are really helpful and the team leads are also extremely supportive. There will almost always be someone in your time zone who can give you a hand!
There is not. OzeScribe absorbs all of the liability so that the MT/HDS does not have to. You will also have access to a team and a team lead if you ever have questions about a report and they are always willing to lend a hand to ensure you make as few mistakes as possible.
We have set minimums of 1000 lines per week, but when you do that does not matter. If you want to do all 1000 lines on a Monday from 2 am on, then you can do that. If you want to take your children to school at 8 am and want to work from noon until 2 pm Monday to Friday to get the job done, you can do that. We ask that you pledge time to us, just so that we know how much work is going to be done. But, when you actually do the work is 100% up to you. To directly answer the question, this career is extremely flexible.
We allow vacation time, we just ask that you let us know a few weeks in advance. There is no paid time off because you are considered a contractor. If you become an employee with OzeScribe, then you will be paid for time off, and as we are continually growing, more and more openings are popping up to become an employee.
When I first started, that was one of the main things too, I saw speech recognition technology. If you look at everything in the media with the advances with Dragon Software, speech recognition, and artificial intelligence, you would probably convince yourself not to become a Medical Transcriptionist. From my side, when I see all of the new clients signing up, it’s completely to the contrary. If you are a doctor, you have to set up the speech recognition. Then the doctor has to teach the speech recognition his or her voice. Once that is set up, the doctor has to edit the the speech recognition file themselves. With us, the Doctor simply dictates into his or her smart phone and OzeScribe does the rest. I can’t see in the near future any sort of revolution in the industry.
No. Our recruitment and training process is very thorough. When you are an Intern and Junior, you are going to make mistakes, we are human. Our team leads and quality assurance team will be there to help you fix those mistakes. When you are a Senior MT/HDS, you will be almost perfect. If you get a file that is inaudible, we send the file back to the doctor for recreation. We advocate for our MT/HDSs and we want you to succeed.
CanScribe’s students are often hired directly out of the 100-hour practicum, so, you can get hired before you even graduate. As for OzeScribe, they will hire you immediately after graduation if you wish to work for them.
Most of our Medical Transcription / Healthcare Documentation Specialists have been with us for four or five years. We do not have a high turnover at all. OzeScribe is the largest service provider in Australia, and we are simply a great company to work for. We find that many people end up loving the job more than they thought, and they love working for OzeScribe.
Typing speed isn’t the sole skill that will earn you money. It is also dependent on your productivity and listening skills. Having a trained ear will help you increase your productivity, which will, in turn, help you earn more money. Once you have the combination of typing speed, listening skills and productivity, you will excel in your position. Don’t let yourself think that because you can’t type quickly, you won’t earn money. There are other aspects that will help you earn more; you will also learn, the more you do this, the faster you will get so don’t get discouraged.
Simply stated, yes. There are a few, but CanScribe is where we get the most of our Medical Transcriptionists. Our team is currently short-staffed and we can’t find enough new hires. We are hiring new Medical Transcriptionists constantly.
In part, the number of graduates that CanScribe is able to produce. iMedX Australia knows that CanScribe graduates are very well trained, so much so that they can get through the Intern and Junior positions faster. We can get more Medical Transcriptionists through our system and working faster because they have learned everything in such detail. They understand how everything needs to be done.
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Did you find the answers you were looking for? Are you still asking yourself, “What is Medical Transcription?” Go check out our post on Medical Transcription jobs.
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