The healthcare sector remains a sparkling silver line on the dark cloud left behind by the economic recession and happens to be a great year to start a career in this industry. An aging population combined with increased life expectancy and expanded health insurance cover thanks to the recent Healthcare Act has ensured that the demand for healthcare professionals continues to rise.
In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the healthcare and social assistance sector is projected to add 5 million jobs between and , which accounts for nearly one-third of the total projected increase in jobs.
Simply speaking, one in three new jobs in the country will be in the healthcare and social assistance industry. Whats more, at a time when low-wage, no-benefits jobs have become more common than we care to admit, healthcare careers are among the few occupations that promise decent compensation as well as a fairly secure future.
Medical transcription is one of these well-paying and reasonably secure healthcare jobs. It may not be as popular as nursing or as high-paying as physical therapy, but medical transcription is one of those healthcare professions that have held their own for years together.
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Part of the healthcare documentation industry, medical transcription involves listening to taped doctor dictations and transcribing them into written reports.
What its not data entry
It may sound like data entry, but the job of a medical transcriptionist is much more complex. A medical transcriptionist needs to listen to the doctor dictations in entirety, interpret medical jargon thats generously used, pick up any clinical nuances, and identify factual, grammatical, and also spelling errors while preparing reports.
The introduction of technologies like the speech recognition software has given rise to a new crop of medical transcriptionists called medical transcription editors.
These professionals are trained at institutes such as Career Step and are given adequate training in comparing the medical reports auto-generated by the software with the audio dictations. Medical transcription editors, then, correct the discrepancies and edit these written reports to conform to the existing standards.
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So, in reality, medical transcription is nothing like data entry. Its a lot more exciting and challenging than data entry and requires some amount of formal training.
Medical transcriptionists need to not only have a thorough understanding of medical terminology, anatomy, and physiology, they must also be aware of patient confidentiality guidelines and legal issues related to healthcare documentation.
Additionally, medical transcriptionists should be knowledgeable in English grammar and punctuation rules and also word-processing software. All these topics are typically covered in post-secondary medical transcription training programs offered by many vocational schools, community colleges, and distance-learning institutions across the country.
What it is a decent income stream
For those who are trained and choose to become certified (the Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity offers two types of certifications), medical transcription can be a fairly lucrative profession.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, medical transcriptionists make $. in mean hourly wages or $, in median annual income with the top percent earning more than $. per hour or $, per year. As your experience and the level of sophistication you bring to the job increases, so does your paycheck.
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Of course, location and type of employer also play a significant role in determining a medical transcriptionists paycheck. For example, medical transcriptionists employed with insurance carriers are paid the most with annual mean wages of $,, while the District of Columbia is the top-paying state for the occupation with medical transcription professionals there making $, in annual mean wages.
If you have dreams of starting your own medical transcription service some day, then a six-figure annual income will be well within your reach. So, are you ready to take the leap yet?