• Share
  • Sharebar
  • Share

You will recall me talking about the moose on the table not too long ago. In talking with a fellow MT this past weekend and in seeing some of the social media posts this week, I have come to believe we have another dead moose on the table. It’s one we often ignore and guys, get ready because this one stinks even more than the one where we talked about the changes the EHR will bring to our world. I ask you to read this carefully, give it some real thought, and then let’s have a discussion. It’s one I think is important and you know, only by acknowledging that the moose is there can we really deal with removing the stench. I write this know it won’t make everyone happy, yet I think particularly with the changes we have coming in our future, we simply have to put this one out there and talk about it. It’s not meant to offend; it IS meant to have a tough discussion.

This moose is called: Not every MT produces quality work or is good at what they do. Yikes, I did say it. It’s a stinky moose. Still I think it’s important to acknowledge this one. Let me tell you why.

Our profession has been through a lot. At the time we started to see a huge impact in offshore transcription and had such an uproar in the industry about that, it was tough to figure out the why. We heard MTs saying they couldn’t find jobs and yet we also heard companies saying they didn’t have enough of a workpool to draw from. Okay, first let’s just acknowledge that often medical transcription went offshore because of cost. It’s simply less expensive in many ways. I can tell you from first hand experience it’s not inexpensive to get it set up, but once it’s set up, then a company does see a cost benefit. So let’s set that aside and just acknowledge that yes, cost is part of the factor here. One day one of my friends said this simple but powerful statement: “I think people are just deciding if they’re going to pay for crap, it should be cheap crap.” Ouch! That one sure hurt. And yet, as a person who at the time did employment testing and hiring, I had to admit I had seen some pretty atrocious employment tests.

It’s so easy when things happen to stand on the sidelines and scream about how something is “done to us” once again. It’s a lot tougher to really take a look at whether there’s some role we played in it happening.

Let me also be really clear that I believe there are a lot of really good MTs who do care about the quality of their work and do a great job every single day. A lot, but not all. And the more people get pushed into the “productivity counts” corner, sometimes the worse it gets.

Are you still breathing? I hope so because we’re not quite done here.

I think we’ve let a lot of people into this profession and allowed them to call themselves medical transcriptionists who simply don’t have the skill set to be really proficient at it. Add to that mix schools that don’t teach all they should (again, not all schools, but we know they’re out there), and employers who are willing to hire those folks because they may cost less and maybe they can “teach” them, and we have created one massive mess in our industry.

This last week I also saw a post by an MT who was complaining on a public newspaper’s board that her medical transcription employer was now requiring 99% accuracy instead of 98%. Really? Do we want the public to think we really think 98% accuracy is “good enough”? In just one example of that, if 98% accuracy was good enough in health care, that would mean for every 100 babies born, 2 could go home with the wrong parents. How good is that 98% accuracy now? Yep, I thought so.

Now flash forward to today. We have the EHR breathing down our neck, and we believe we are capable of those roles. We are singing a mantra about keeping the narrative in the report as one avenue of retaining roles as the EHR is rolled out because “we focus on the integrity of the documentation.” Hmm, now let’s see what else is happening at the same time. Health care is trying to figure out how to decrease costs, implement technology, and improve patient safety (hopefully not necessarily in that order). So today I see a post from someone who actually said they spent way too long looking for data in a record because of the horrible job done by the MTs. Wow. If that’s the image we have out there, how can we advocate for being the ones who should be responsible for being sure the data is right? It’s a huge challenge. I also spoke with someone not too long ago who asked me to explain to them more about how transcription worked. He asked because he said he has talked to hundreds of patients and has yet to find one single patient who didn’t find errors in their records. One example he gave was that his own report said he was an 80-something-year old female. Not what any man in this 40s or 50s wants to see in his records.

Simply put, MTs who cannot or do not produce true quality in their work won’t be able to find roles in the EHR world. In addition, it will be really tough to advocate for a role for us if we’re seen as the group who creates errors in the documentation. It’s something we need to address.

Are you seeing the moose here? Yep, it stinks. So let’s have some discussion. How do we clean this up so that we can really be seen as the solution to some of the challenges today and not another “error” to get rid of? I look forward to your responses!

Related posts:

  1. We Have a Dead Moose

Tagged with: •

Filed under: Challenges in Medical Transcription • Future of Medical Transcription

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!