As we approach a bill for health care, I begin to wonder how that will impact those in the medical transcription field. There are several factors to consider, i.e. EMR, VR, Medicare, Medicaid and so on. One assumption I am going to make here is that electronic medical records will play a fairly large part in this bill because, if there is a public option, a patient will be able to have portable insurance/health care; and as they move about the country access to their medical records will be important, but I digress from the main point here. One thing Medicare and Medicaid currently require is a medical record and forms to be complete for physician reimbursement, and I gather with a public option this will become more important.
Obviously, there are a number of ways that an individual practitioner creates patient documents with some being templates just containing vitals, medications and referral for tests and labs, but other practitioners like a more in-depth report, which is where the transcriptionist comes into play. These reports usually contain a portion of the report where the patient is interviewed and discusses current issues they have with their practitioner. This can also occur in an “initial” visit where the practitioner spends some time with the patient just getting to know him/her. I have to assume, at this point, that the only competition to the transcriptionist will be voice recognition software and most of what I have read about that states that it is a ways off from being perfect and almost always requires an editor. So, in effect even though a physician saves some money and time by going to VR there is still a cost incurred for an editor.
Having said that, if in fact a public option is approved, we will add somewhere around 30 million patients to the pie. This will cause a significant increase in the need for transcriptionists or editors to cover the increased need for documents. This could in effect be a boom for the transcription industry and may, in fact, cause a jump in the price that a practitioner pays for these services. If I am right and you are a physician reading this, perhaps it would be a good idea to get your transcription service now rather than later?