A very large integrated health care provider in Texas commissioned a consulting company to suggest cost cutting measures by reducing expenses and thereby using the revenue to provide excellent quality care to more than half a million patients visiting the two 500 bed hospitals every year.
The commissioned company presented the findings, and on top of the list of cost saving remedial measures suggested by the company was to contract an outside agency or outsource the health information management (HIM) medical transcription.
And in support of the measures, the company included a report of a six month study which evaluated the transcription quality of outsourced service providers, the turnaround time, the productivity and the all important cost that these companies charged, a detailed break-up of transcription cost and production indicated that the in-house transcription facility of the hospitals was costing 40% more than what outsourced companies charge.
It estimated that the two hospitals annually were spending close to $250,000 on preparing medical records of the patients, and if the same services were contracted to an outside vendor, the hospitals would be paying only $146,000, a clear savings of $104,000 annually.
As a further study to match the quality of services of an in-house versus a contracted outsourced company, the internal departments of the hospitals preparing the medical records were studied, and the degree of accuracy, consistency and quality was closely monitored and matched with the outsourced vendors .
It needs to be emphasized that the outsourced vendor companies were as good as their in-house counter parts, and in fact the turn-around-time of outsourced companies was faster than the in-house operations, the other fact that came to light was, the hospitals were using obsolete transcription equipment and where as outsourced companies used newer equipment, because of which the productivity was more efficient and less time consuming.
The study further concluded that contracting outside companies for transcription services could further save the hospitals in investing on costly equipment, besides costs on training of in-house staff. The study was a clear pointer for outsourcing medical transcriptions and cutting costs.

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