To Be or Not to Be a Medical Transcriptionist

Is medical transcription the right career choice for you? It certainly isn't for everyone. Without excellent grammar and spelling skills, it would be impossible to do. It also demands a listening skill that is almost supernatural. If you think doctors' signatures are bad, you should hear their dictations! I've actually heard doctors dictate things like, "Umpphacarumpaluma viral meningitis," and "Breath sounds are clafuandparmsolufbiraferty." Of course, not all doctors are nightmare dictators. Some are very clear and precise in their dictations. Sometimes the problem does not rest with the dictator at all, but with their dictation equipment.

Here is a list of problems you might encounter as a Medical Transcriptionist:

* Bad sound quality on dictations. Some doctors sound as if they are dictating from underwater.

* High noise levels in the background. Some doctors sound as if they are dictating from a frat party.

* Other strange background noises: Clicks, whirs, crashes, ringing phones, crying babies, arguments, sirens, alarms, yawns, and noises too bizarre to describe.

But for those select few who can get past those roadblocks, medical transcription is a rewarding and lucrative career. (And fortunately, with experience, those problems become easier to handle.)

Medical transcription is one of the fastest growing work-at-home careers on the Internet. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, "Demand for medical transcriptionists is expected to increase due to rapid growth in health care industries spurred by a growing and aging population." Medical transcriptionist positions are predicted to grow 30.3% between 2000 and 2010.

This is a booming work-at-home industry with amazing benefits, sign on bonuses, and income potential. I recently saw a medical transcription position in my local paper which was paying $35 an hour for experienced transcriptionists! Would you like to make that kind of money? The average income is $40K per year.

The good thing about starting a career in medical transcription is that it can be done in a short period of time with a minimal investment in training. The online school where I trained has packages starting at $1320 and can be completed in 4 months to a year. The program is self paced, so how fast a student completes the training is based upon how hard they work at it and how much time they have to devote. Usually it requires about 2 hours per day. It took me 10 months to complete my training. Here's where I trained. http://www.homecareerinfo.com/0277

There are only a handful of training programs that receive formal approval from AAMT (The American Association of Medical Transcription).

The school I attended is one of those and is listed in the top 3, along with M-Tec and Andrews. It was an easy choice for me because my school was by far the least expensive, and most of the MT companies I know were hiring their graduates! And I know over 100 medical transcription companies who hire home-based medical transcriptionists!

If you've ever thought about a career in medical transcription, here are some of the subjects you'll be studying:

* Medical Word-Building

* Human Anatomy, Physiology & Disease Processes

* Abbreviations, Word Differentiation, Plurals

* Medical Specialties

* And much more.

It's an exciting career. I hope this article will help you decide if it's the right career choice for you.

Doralynn Kennedy

Doralynn Kennedy is the owner of the U.S. Work-at-Home Directory, http://www.doralynn.net. She is also a working medical transcriptionist

Excellent Earning Opportunity ! How To Start A Medical Transcription Home Business That Guarantees

Medical transcriptionists swiftly and accurately interpret through doctor's dictation, the medical records of patients into medically and grammatically precise reports.

The interactions between the patient and his physician require transcription. Some of these include:

Surgical procedures

Medical consultations

Diagnoses

Prognoses Prescriptions

Radiological or other laboratory results

Dissemination of the patients' medical history

Autopsy reports

Medical transcription involves picking up dictation via tape, voice file and digital system using foot pedal for start-stop control, ear phones and a word processing program.

You can either choose to conduct medical transcription as an independent worker or an employee with benefits

Requirements

Because the dictations involve many medical terminologies, you need to recognize, be familiar with and understand medical procedure, terminology and anatomy.

Likewise, English grammar and outstanding typing accuracy and speed are required, as well as keen listening ability and the patience to sit for hours through heavy concentration.

Training

A certified medical transcription' title will be beneficial in demonstrating your expertise when looking for clients.

You need to invest in your training, except if you had 'on-the-job' experience or healthcare background.

Medical transcription programs costs vary, averaging 3,000 dollars.

You can start only to promote yourself being a certified medical transcriptionist if you successfully have completed the examination on certification governed by the AAMT or 'American Association for Medical Transcription'.

Once you have obtained the certification, fulfilling recertification requirements are necessary periodically to uphold this credential, by way of continuing education programs.

Medical transcription courses can be taken through these formats:

Community college course

Correspondence distance education

Vocational school

Internet learning courses

Setting up the home office

You will also be investing in your home equipment and put up a workspace.

Necessary equipments are a Dictaphone with foot pedal or any other equivalent telephone devices to accept dictation, headset, PC with word processing capability, medical dictionary and manual resources for pharmacology and anatomy, medical spellchecker as well as extensive abbreviation tool like Smartype or Instant Text.

Charging

Many medical transcriptionists are charging per page while others charge per hour. If you can type fast, it will be beneficial to both you and your clients if you charge per hour. Whereas if your typing speed is on the average, you can charge per page.

Medical transcription work

Whereas majority of medical transcriptionists work at home alone, your healthcare industry provides networking opportunities and continuing education as well that might be worth checking.

Thankfully, there is the Internet, where medical transcriptionists are able to offer their services from anywhere, download files, transcribe and submit to clients through it.

Gaetane has thoroughly researched the internet to locate the best High Income Business Opportunities that will enable you to start making money from your own home. http://4instant-online-business.com http://4instant-online-business.com/pips.html

Work At Home In Medical Transcription

Among the many opportunities available today to work at home is the field of medical transcription. However, many people are unfamiliar with what medical transcription entails.

Medical transcription is a highly specialized job whether it?s done at home or not. As such, anyone who wishing to earn a medical transcription job will need certain kinds of skills and training. It is a legitimate career, not a get-rich-quick scheme. The ads that advertise a medical transcription job, working from home, and claiming the job requires virtually no skills, no experience, with instant cash returns are not truthful ads. Most likely they're scams aiming to separate honest people from their money.

The Job

Medical transcription is a real job with real responsibilities requiring the use of real skills. It is not unskilled labor like stuffing envelopes or assembling items. The work at home job of someone in medical transcription is that of a medical language specialist. This means that part of the responsibility as a medical transcription employee is to interpret and transcribe dictation by medical professionals.

As a medical transcription employee, the most common task will likely be handling dictation. These dictations can cover pretty much everything that takes place between the health care provider and the patient. All the information needed is usually recorded either into an audio tape or onto digital voice processing systems. The job therefore is to transfer this information into written form using a word processor.

Medical transcription can certainly pay well. However, it doesn?t come without work. As stated earlier in this article, working at home in medical transcription is no simple matter. It is not something that can be learned in four or six weeks. There are, fortunately for those interested, several training programs out there that specialize in medical transcription.

The Skills

When deciding to take a home medical transcription job, there is a general set of skills that will be needed. First, there is keyboarding skill. Since medical transcription deals mostly with typing, data entry skills will be necessary. Grammar and spelling skills are also important; since medical transcription focuses more upon getting the dictation transferred into an accessible written form. Mistakes in either spelling or grammar challenge accessibility. High retention will also be important as the primary job in medical transcription is recording information.

In most cases, companies like to hire people with previous in-house experience for their medical transcription jobs working from home. This means that before they will hire someone to work at home they want to be assured that person has worked in medical transcription in a hospital or clinic. In fact, many of these companies require at least a year or two of experience working for the medical community from their applicants.

In order to assure getting a home medical transcription job, first obtaining the necessary experience is therefore advisable. If there are concerns about not getting the job because of a lack of experience a possible solution would be to do volunteer work. Many organizations are frequently looking for volunteers in medical transcription, allowing someone starting out to gain valuable experience towards landing a good job.

Linda Davis contributes articles to several popular online magazines, on home management and family and home themes.

Medical Transcription - A Glamorous Lucrative Career

What is medical transcription?

The process of transcribing doctor-dictated dictations for the purposes of documentation as a medical record is simply termed as medical transcription. The person who transcribes the dictations into a document is a medical transcriptionist or a medical transcription professional. The process originated in the West. The person who did this job used to be called as a medical assistant who used to be with the doctor at the hospital writing down notes instructed by him. Advancement of this process is electronic conversion of the dictations.

Why and who?

For insurance purposes and maintenance of medical records. The major player outsourcing medical transcription work is USA. Canada, UK, and Australia have some. The outsourced countries include India, Philippines, Indonesia to name a few among others. The medical transcription professional needs a wide knowledge of medical terminology, American English, and critical thinking skills that may help him/her to interpret what is dictated to produce accurate documents. The dictator speaks over a hand-held device called a Dictaphone or a electronic recorder or a device which has a 1-button solution to upload his voice into the server. The transcriber downloads them at his location through a server that is provided to him by the organization he works for. He then transcribes the dictations into medico legal document.

Why outsourcing?

Medical transcription happens to be one of the earliest BPO jobs outsourced to India. Indians have strong English communicating skills due to the curriculum followed from the days pre-independence. The time difference of 12 hours between India and USA makes it easier for the doctors/clinics to have their reports on their table at their next visit to the clinic. Furthermore, cost of labor is much cheaper for the outsourcer.

Potential?

Medical transcription has a strong employment in both India and the United States. One can work for a company that serves for the Healthcare Industry. The model also involves working at home as independent contractors. In India, the independent home transcriptionist model is growing to gain much popularity. It is said, still a larger portion of the work is still to be outsourced from US. Both NASSCOM in India and the US Department of Labor have identified this career as having a higher growth potential year by year.

Earnings potential?

As far as the money making is concerned, the fresher in medical transcription earns a starting salary approximately around Rs. 5000 and after 2 years of experience, his money making capability goes to around Rs. 15,000. Careers advancement can lead him to become an Editor or a Leader of a team in a company which could fetch him around Rs.20,000 or more. In these days of growing population and a means to earn money, this is quite decent for an Indian standard.

Allied careers?

Medical coding and billing are showing up as allied careers related to medical transcription.

"This article has been submitted by Arun. S. Shanmugasundaram for http://www.mtgateway.com/ and can be republished without editing provided these lines inside the quotes follow the article."

FTP Hosting For Transcription

FTP Hosting ? an overview

The term FTP stands for ?File Transfer Protocol?. In this era of Internet technology transferring files over the Internet is a common phenomenon. FTP hosting service allows us to upload as well as download large amount of files by keeping necessary security measures. If you are unaware about FTP ? you are missing something that can simplify the file exchange process of your business.

FTP hosting service comes with storage system where you can upload the copy of a file, irrespective of the size and content. This storage acts as FTP server or FTP Site. You can transfer the files efficiently from one location to another through this FTP server. People who are authorized to access your FTP server can download or delete the files.

Be it a small firm or large organization, companies are taking complete advantage of Internet technology in their business process. In general people are familiar with HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol), which comes with a set of rules for transferring files, irrespective of the content (text, image, video, audio, multimedia etc.). With the pace of time, people started realizing the importance of File Transfer Protocol in business process.

FTP hosting for business process

How can you think about transferring files in a secure mode without FTP? In a business process you need to exchange information from one node to another. That information may be simple text, image or a huge multimedia. In a business process you need to exchange files with vendors as well as clients and there is nothing better than FTP hosting service that takes complete care of your objectives. Be it a heavy engineering sector or a busy law firm, you can efficiently exchange the files through FTP hosting service.

FTP hosting works like blessing in Transcription business. Compared to other business processes, the size of each file is large in transcription business. Moreover, you need to exchange files efficiently with clients and transcriptionists. In a transcription business you need to maintain several accounts for the transcriptionists and clients. With FTP hosting service you can easily take manage the distribution of files between them. FTP hosting service not only allows you to exchange large files over the Internet but also provides the facility of creating multiple accounts to simplify the business process.

Internet based Transcription Business

The nature of transcription business has changed with the introduction of BPO (business Process Outsourcing) or KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) in the business sector. Today transcription business services are done over the Internet to increase the pace of business process.

In general, we can categorize transcription services in five different sectors ? Medical (Medical Transcription Services), Legal (Legal Transcription Services), General Business (Business Transcription Services), Digital (Digital Transcription Services) and Word Processing (Word Processing Services).

In Medical Transcription Service you have to transcribe medical reports, patient progress reports, reviews for the clients. Legal Transcription Services, on the other hand transcribes comprehensive legal reports and general correspondences. Digital Transcription Services create transcribed documents from audio files. In Word Processing Services you have to create research papers, manuals, database, desktop publishing and other types of documents. Therefore, FTP hosting service is necessary to exchange files and transcribed files between clients and transcriptionists.

Security feature in Transcription Business

Security is an important issue in Internet based transcription business. You need to maintain separate accounts for the transcriptionists to interact with the clients. FTP hosting services comes with the facility of separate FTP account. You can create as many accounts as you want for the transcriptionists. Each transcriptionist will interact with the client through his/her own account. Since passwords are unique for FTP accounts, therefore you can easily restrict transcriptionists to access the files from others? FTP account. Moreover, a user cannot delete any file from FTP site without proper username and password.

Advantages of FTP Hosting in Transcription Business

By implementing FTP hosting service in the business, you can efficiently manage transcription services and improve the speed of the business process by maintaining required security. Other than transferring large files from one computer to another through FTP site, you can also send Emails with large attachments. Some common features are ? Sending mail with attachment to several people (clients and transcriptionists). FTP service acts like magic for people who are using slow dial up links. They can efficiently download large files from FTP site irrespective of the dial up speed.

Finally, FTP hosting services comes with a web based interface through which you can administer all the FTP accounts in your business process. You have to provide separate FTP user account and password to each client to upload or download files from the FTP server. By this one client will never view the transcribed documents, which are uploaded in FTP site for other clients.
Mike Jewson is a Network Engineer with "InstantFTPsites.com". You can learn more about "FTP Hosting" services online at http://www.InstantFTPsites.com ? 2006 InstantFTPsites You may reprint this artilce online and in print provided the links remain live and the content remains unaltered.

Medical Transcription Schools ? Avoiding Online Scams

Medical transcription is a lucrative profession which allows you the flexibility to work from home. Unfortunately, it?s this appeal that has opened the doors for less than honest online medical transcription schools.

If you don?t know a lot about MT, then I will assure you it is a real profession and a real possibility. It is not a get rich quick scheme or overnight money maker.

If you?re shopping around for an online medical transcription course, here are a few things to keep in mind.

How to choose the right course and avoid scams

Make sure the company offering the course is reputable and has been around for a long time. You can do this by checking with the Better Business Bureau. Here are a few other things to look for.

Send the school an email asking a question about their course. If they respond promptly in a professional matter that?s a good sign. If they seem overly pushy be a bit weary.

Look at their website. Is it professional? Do they give you statistics about their success rates, student testimonials, Q and A section?

Do they have an online student log in area or online support if you have questions?

Are their company details listed on their website? Such as how long they?ve been in business, contact details (mailing address and phone number).

Do they make exaggerated promises about their course? If they are promising you will make a lot of money in a short time, then be careful. No one can really predict how much you will make or how long it will take you. They should give general statistics and figures in an unbiased way.

Do they provide financial aid or payment assistance?

Do they have a list of graduates or companies which have hired their graduates?

Do they give you updates of students who have graduated from their school?

Do they have a student message board, a newsletter or information which will make you feel part of a community?

Studying from home can be lonely at times, a reputable course will offer you assistance from the very beginning until you find a job.Mila Sidman is an experienced MT and owner of http://www.AskTheMT.com - an informative website dedicated to answering all your medical transcription questions.