The Truth About Home Based Medical Transcription Work

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Here are the truths about medical transcription that you can use as a guide if you are thinking of going into this industry and taking up proper medical transcription training.

1. The medical transcription sector is growing.
This is true. Along with the global increase in demand for health care services, the transcription sector is also growing. As more and more patients require proper health care, the efficient recording and retrieval of patient’s records, analysis and doctor recommendations is becoming more critical to performing fast and accurate service. This caused an increase in demand for well trained medical transcriptionists.
Since technology is the primary platform when doing transcription tasks (connected computers and data access and retrieval), it can be performed in any location as long as those who perform the transcription have fast and dependable way to receive audio recordings, process the recordings to text format and send it back to the source of the audio recordings.
This gives rise to work at home transcriptionists who have dependable internet connection, fast computers at home, and have the necessary transcription equipments.

2. You don’t need to become a certified medical transcriptionist.
At present, a valid certificate is not yet a government mandated requirement when applying for medical transcription job though it is ideal to get certified since it will add to your reputation. On most occasions hospitals and companies hiring medical transcriptionists won’t even ask if you are or not a certified medical transcriptionist. What matters most is you have the proper training and appropriate work experience.

3. Medical Transcription Job requires specialized knowledge.
Some people may say that performing a transcription task is easy and won’t require proper knowledge or can be easily learned. This is wrong. The truth is a transcription jobs require specialized knowledge. Sure, using a computer and word processing software is easy but that doesn’t mean you can easily adapt to the language used by doctors. Converting the audio recordings to its text equivalent will require a working knowledge of all the medical terms, procedures and human anatomy. Most of the audio to be transcribed will contain medical abbreviations, and the transcriptionist is required to understand these abbreviations and medical terms.

4. You need proper education.
Similar to what I mentioned above, a transcription job will require specialized knowledge. So, if you are really thinking of starting a career in this industry then be prepared to take formal training. Proper education is required when you’ve decided to start a transcription career and presently you have two options for training. One is to take the training online (which will allow you to study at your own pace at the comfort of your house). Online training usually take up to 8 months to 1 year. If you want classroom interaction then you can apply for an on-campus training which on average will take you up to two years to finish.

5. Medical Transcription is not a get rich quick scheme.
Just to make sure that we are on the same page, keep in mind that a transcription job is not a get rich quick scheme.
So if on your search for a medical transcription job you bump into an ad that tells you how you can make money overnight with medical transcription even for those without experience and ask you to pay them for a list of where to apply, then it should turn-on a red light.
A medical transcription job is something you’ll have to study for or have years of experience doing before you can apply for available jobs or become a home based transcription professional.

Medical Alert Systems and In Home Care Can Combat Rising Healthcare Costs

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A medical alert system can bring children of aging parents the peace of mind of knowing that their parents, who may live alone, can reach help if they experience a fall or other accident. The most common reason for purchasing a medical alert is wanting to make sure that an elderly loved one who is generally able to live independently is able to reach help when they need it. But can this tool for independent living also be a weapon in the fight against rising healthcare costs in the United States?

The population of the United States includes 39 million individuals over the age of 65 as of 2008, and by the year 2030, this number is expected to skyrocket to 72 million, as “Baby Boomers” reach the age of 65.

So, the aging population is growing. The individuals of the “baby boom” generation are reaching senior age, causing the senior population to increase dramatically. Not only that, but healthcare advances have allowed people to live longer; there are many more people reaching their 80s, 90s and even past 100. Those who reach these ages are, on average, suffering a large number of physical ailments and as a consequence, they consistently incur high medical expenses.

More seniors, fighting more physical ailments means a higher healthcare cost amongst our increasingly senior population. In fact, by the year 2030, health care for seniors is predicted to account for 25% of all the nations health care expenditures.

This is where a medical alert system can help. The price of equipment rental and monitoring can be less than $1 per day; a long hospital stay costs much more than that. The longer a senior waits to receive help after a fall, the more complications they will experience.

If a senior citizen falls, and is unable to summon help within the first hour, they are extremely likely to lose their independence, and most in this situation are ultimately placed in nursing homes.

With a medical alert system, an individual can get quick help, which often eliminates the need for a lengthy hospital stay, and prevents seniors from experiencing complications from their fall that land them permanently in a nursing home or care facility.

In conjunction with in-home care provided either by a professional service or a member of the seniors family, a medical alert system can keep an elderly individual out of a hospital, out of a nursing home, and can extend the amount of time in which he or she can live at home safely.

The average cost of nursing homes can top an average pricetag of $83,585/year, or $229/day. A medical alert system rental and monthly monitoring service costs less than $1/day.

While the rapidly rising population of seniors in the United States as well as recent changes to Medicare almost certainly guarantee a drastic spike in healthcare costs, this increase can be slowed. Preventative measures are the key to lowering healthcare costs in the United States, as it decreases the amount of costly emergency care and the many expenditures that come when an individual is no longer able to live in their homes.

How Radiology Technology Helps To Ease The Medical Office Workload

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In decades past, many of the routine tasks associated with the running of a medical facility that offered radiology services had to be performed by hand, because that was the only option available at the time. Now, however, with inexpensive personal computer technology becoming widely available, there has been a shift to moving many of these radiology tasks to a digital environment for ease of use, increased productivity, and cost reductions.

One of the most sought-after pieces of radiology technology is the fully functional PACS system. For those working in a radiology or cardiology department, a Radiology PACS or Cardiology PACS can help with everything from viewing digital images to storing them or distributing them.

The amount of work to process even a single film x-ray is burdensome, and in medical facilities that’s multiplied by hundreds of times throughout the course of a work year. The images need expensive chemicals for developing, which takes time. You have to work with hard copies of film, which must then be handled by humans for filing and archiving, not to mention retrieval of images.

Using cardiology PACS in your cardio unit eliminates all of this extra work. By using the DICOM digital imaging format, images taken from a variety of modalities can all be read by the radiology PACS equipment, and it allows you to view your digital medical images within seconds after taking them, unlike film images.

PACS radiology technology also allows for the storage of DICOM digital images. The PACS appliance can be used as a server to store many terabytes of digital medical information saved in the DICOM format. When there is a need for handling a large volume of studies, the radiology PACS has also been successfully used as a router as well, automating what can be a very cumbersome job of making sure everyone on each patient’s medical team receives the proper information. The servers may be located at the site of your medical facility or offsite, which helps you to stay within HIPPA compliance concerning disaster recovery of medical records.

Using a PACS also make distributing medical records much easier. No longer must you rely on postal mail or couriers to deliver hard copies of patient film x-rays. Instead, you can simply send the proper DICOM digital images to consulting physicians on your local-area network, wide-area network or on a virtual-private network in seconds, greatly improving the productivity of the entire medical system in place, and enhancing patient care at the same time.

Why Even Gifted Medical Students Need to Take USMLE Review Seriously

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Medical students who are intellectually gifted and talented often perform individual tasks at a very high level. These students display exceptional memories and learn at a rapid pace. They are knowledgeable about things which their colleagues may not have even heard of yet. But in the USMLE world, a gifted student may also exhibit extreme anxiety more than the average medical student. Here are some truths about giftedness which will further explain why no medical student should deny themselves the opportunity to participate in an adequate USMLE review:

1. Gifted students are often perfectionists and idealistic. They may equate achievement and grades with self-esteem and self-worth, which sometimes leads to fear of failure and interferes with achievement.

2. Medical students who are gifted may experience heightened sensitivity to their own expectations and those of others resulting in guilt over achievements or grades perceived to be low.

3. Most of the gifted students are asynchronous. Their chronological age, social, physical, emotional and intellectual development may be at different levels.

4. Some gifted students are “mappers” or sequential learners while others are “leapers” or spatial learners. Leapers may not know how they got a right answer. Mappers may get lost in the steps leading to the right answer.

5. Gifted students may be so far ahead of their colleagues or classmates that they know more than half of the lesson before the school year begins. Their boredom can result in low achievement and grades.

6. Gifted people are problem solvers. They benefit from working on open-ended, interdisciplinary problems.

7. Gifted individuals often think abstractly and with such complexity that they may need help with concrete study and test-taking skills. In the USMLE world, they may not be able to select one answer in a multiple choice question because they see how all the answers might be correct.

8. Gifted individuals who do well in school may define success in getting an “A” and failure as any grade other than “A.” Thus, in their USMLE review sessions or a practice test any result that is not a “perfect” result and does not make them feel they are at the top of their class, may make them feel frustrated.

Thus medical students who are gifted and talented need opportunities to work hard on challenging learning tasks. Participating with fellow students in a rigorous USMLE review is an opportunity for talented student both to learn and to be understood by their colleagues. In fact the most gifted students may benefit from such reviews as much as, if not more, than the “average” or “below-average” student.

Your Worksite and Medical Marijuana

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Nowadays, with 14 US states that have legalized medical marijuana, there are perhaps hundreds of thousands of employers, who wonder about the ways to keep the worksite drug free and meantime provide the adequate environment for workers, who are taken through marijuana treatment. In reality, the general medical marijuana topic is a mess. The federal authorities dont want to move from their all marijuana is illegal position and marijuana-legal states have unbelievably different approaches to the issue. Thus, there has never been a better time for reviewing drug policy of your company.

Here are some guidelines to the major white spots:

For enterprises that work for the government, like those with federal contracts, the directing document should be Drug Free Workplace Act of 1988, which bans the utilization of marijuana in jobsites that participate in federal contracts.

The DOT Department of Transportation as well bans the use of medical marijuana for employees that are in so-called safety-sensitive positions, such as bus drivers, subway operators, truck drivers, armed transit security, ship captains, and pilots. This ban covers all states, involving the states that have legalized medical marijuana. Thus, even if you have a medical marijuana card, but you have to fly a 757, you have to make sure that your medical marijuanas effect has passed, when you board your pilot seat.

Some attorneys advise to treat marijuana treatment as if it was a use of any other prescription drug, and the worker could do it legally and safely. They claim that such attitude can save employers both money and time in a situation that leads medical marijuana to the point of getting more and more accepted by society and becoming legalized in greater number of states during the next few years.

Different States Different Regulations

First of all, in the legalized states, every patient that has a medical marijuana card is protected from detainment as long as they have dealt with all the needed documentation and has the proof of a doctors approval for their marijuana treatment. But this is just the beginning.

If you live and work in Oregon or California and you are tested positive for marijuana at your workplace, you can get fired. You can even be fired if you use medical marijuana with the required approval, and a prescription from your physician, who takes you through your marijuana treatment.

Just recall a precedent back in 2008 the Ross vs. RagingWire case. Back then, the Supreme Court of California settled that the employer drug test is legal and that it isnt discriminative to fire a worker for marijuana use, even when its not used in the jobsite. Oregon had the Emerald Steel Fabricators, Inc. vs. Bureau of Labor and Industries, the states Supreme Court settled that Oregon employers have to not support the workers medical marijuana use, since the federal law takes priority over state laws.

Patients that undergo marijuana treatment in Vermont, will be most probably arrested if found using or under the influence of medical marijuana in their workplaces. The same is true about New Mexico patients.

In certain states, such as Rhode Island and Maine, you wont be discriminated or fined for your employment of medical marijuana, if you have a medical marijuana card.

In the end, simply dont forget to review the regulations and laws of your state thoroughly, prior to using medical marijuana either at home or in the jobsite.