Quality is an important aspect of Medical transcription. One must recognize that errors in the healthcare record can put the healthcare provider and also the patient at risk. Also remember that any type of error on the patient record can become useful to the plaintiff attorneys during a litigation against the healthcare facilities and providers.
It is true that to err is human but all medical transcription documents must only have a very minimal error level and for this a basic quality standard has to be followed. The quality of the transcription depends on many factors that include the experience and skill of the medical transcriptionist, the quality of the dictation recordings, the organization and the language proficiency of the dictator etc.
It is noteworthy that transposition errors are different from transcription errors. As the name suggests, transposition errors occur when characters have "transposed" (switched places). The most common errors in transcription include omission of a dictated word, usage of the wrong word, misspelling of words, typographical errors and grammatical errors.
This is what The American Association of Medical Transcription (AAMT) has stated on the principles of quality in Medical transcription. When a document is reviewed (i.e., audited) for quality, the key principles that establishes quality assurance criteria for that document are:
The transcribed report should be reviewed against the actual dictation. Reading the report without listening to the dictation does not provide an accurate comparison of the transcription to the dictation. The review should apply industry-specific standards as provided by current resources and references. When evaluating style, punctuation, or grammar, The AAMT Book of Style is the industry standard. The review should encompass attention to risk management issues and the documentation standards of accreditation and healthcare compliance agencies. Accuracy scores (ratings) should be quantified with the use of a numeric calculation that weights varying degrees of error against the length of the report. AAMT recommends the following quality goals: 100% accuracy with respect to critical errors; 98% accuracy with respect to major errors; and 98% accuracy with respect to all errors in the report, including minor errors (see below for definitions of "critical," "major," and "minor" errors). The reviewer (or the review process) should provide timely and consistent feedback to the medical transcriptionist in order to eliminate repetition of errors. All measurements, standards, and benchmarks should be disclosed to the medical transcriptionist and should be set forth in written guidelines by the healthcare provider or transcription service.
The AAMT statement on quality assurance can be seen at http://www.ahdionline.org/scriptcontent/qualityassurance.cfm
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