Cardiology Transcription: Overcoming Errors to Increase the Accuracy of Transcribed Report

The cardiac reports of the patients are dictated into the voice recorder by the Cardiologist and sent to the cardiology transcriptionists through internet. The transcriptionists listen to it and type it into computer, to create electronic text files. A poorly recorded dictation, heavy accented voice, background disturbances, loss of concentration, improper knowledge of medical terminology and typing errors are some of the major reasons behind errors in transcribed reports.

A transcribed report having accuracy of more than 98% is accepted as reliable medical document and is used by the physician to treat the patient. The errors are categorized as follows:

• Critical Errors – These are mistakes in Patient ID, omission in dictation or a missing part and misuse of medical word so that it severely compromises the safety of the patient information. A transcription report, which has one or more, such type of errors, is rejected.
• Major errors- The errors like wrong verb usage, spelling mistakes, failure to raise flag for quality audit or misusing the flagging right. A transcribed report having three or more such types of errors is rejected.
• Minor errors- The grammar or format mistakes or any other errors, which have very less impact on the safety or the integrity of the medical report, fall under this category. A transcription report, which has nine or more such type of errors, is rejected.

A higher frequency of errors in the Cardiology transcription report points towards poor quality standards of the transcription company and casts a bad impression about the professional competence of the service provider. The time, money and manpower spent towards correcting these errors increase the production cost. The turnaround time also increases and prevents in timely delivery of treatment to the patients.

Streamlining the Transcription process

A detailed analysis of the Cardiology transcription process will help to identify bottlenecks, which induce errors in the final outcome. Mentioned below is the some important quality enhancing steps, which increase the accuracy of the transcription report, considerably.

• Provide intensive training to cardiology transcriptionists.
• Assign a small group of cardiology transcribers to a particular dictator so that voice pattern and dictation style can be familiarized.
• Integrate Speech recognition software with transcriptionists. The software will speed up process, while the transcribers will edit errors in the report. This will reduce fatigue on cardiologist trancriptionists and thus minimize errors.
• The MT should update their knowledge of medical terminology, regularly.
• The quality control department should work in tandem with transcribers and provide a complete feedback about the quality of transcribed reports. The audit department should help cardiology transcriptionists to identify their weakness and provide them sufficient training to increase the accuracy of the report. This will surely raise the quality standards of the final output.
• Sharpen listening skills of the transcribers and editing skills of proofreaders or editors through in house training to filter out the errors.

The accuracy of the cardiology transcription report is of paramount importance because the physician depends on it, to treat the patients. Any error, carried forward, can alter the outcome of the treatment and seriously undermine the health of the patient.

To eliminate the transcription error it is necessary to understand its source and streamline the process accordingly.

Jason Gaya

Read more on Cardiology Transcription at, www.cardioscribes.com