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Medical Transcription Certificate

Medical transcriptionists listen to dictated recordings made by physicians and other healthcare professionals and transcribe them into medical reports, correspondence, and other administrative material. They generally listen to recordings on a headset, using a foot pedal to pause the recording when necessary, and key the text into a personal computer or word processor, editing as necessary for grammar and clarity.

Postsecondary training in medical transcription is preferred by employers; writing and computer skills also are important. Employers prefer to hire transcriptionists who have completed postsecondary training in medical transcription. Completion of a 2-year associate’s degree or 1-year certificate program—including coursework in anatomy, medical terminology, legal issues relating to healthcare documentation, and English grammar and punctuation—is highly recommended, but not always required.

Employment change. Employment of medical transcriptionists is projected to grow by 11 percent from 2008 to 2018, about as fast as the average for all occupations. Demand for medical transcription services will continue to be spurred by a growing and aging population. While many companies are adding jobs in this particular niche, some medical facilities don’t have the resources to handle medical transcription in-house. Instead they choose to outsource it to an individual or company who completes it before sending it back to the health-care organization. This one-year certificate program is designed to give the student the basic office skills and computer software skills needed in order to work as a medical transcriptionist either for a healthcare facility or from home. Speech recognition technology allows physicians and other health professionals to dictate medical reports to a computer, which immediately creates an electronic document. In spite of the advances in this technology, the software has been slow to grasp and analyze the human voice, the English language, and the medical vernacular with all its diversity. As a result, there will continue to be a need for skilled medical transcriptionists to identify and appropriately edit the inevitable errors created by speech recognition systems and to create a final document.

Job opportunities will be good, especially for those who are certified. Hospitals will continue to employ a large percentage of medical transcriptionists, but job growth will be in other industries. An increasing demand for standardized records should result in rapid employment growth in physicians’ offices, especially in large group practices.

Compensation arrangements for medical transcriptionists vary. Some are paid on the basis of the number of hours they work or the number of lines they transcribe. Others receive a base pay per hour, with incentives for extra production. Employees of transcription services and independent contractors almost always receive production-based pay. Independent contractors earn more than do transcriptionists who work for others, but independent contractors have higher expenses than their corporate counterparts, receive no benefits, and may face a higher risk of termination than do wage-and-salary transcriptionists.

Another possible job choice with this certificate is becoming a medical scribe. A medical scribe—also known as a Clinical Scribe, ER Scribe, or ED Scribe—is a trained medical information manager who specializes in charting physician-patient encounters in real-time during medical exams. A medical scribe can work onsite at a hospital or clinic, or from a remote, HIPAA-secure facility. Medical scribes who work at an offsite location are known as virtual medical scribes and normally work in clinical settings.

A medical scribe’s primary duties are to follow a physician through his or her work day and chart patient encounters in real-time using a medical office’s Electronic Health Record and existing templates. Medical scribes also generate referral letters for physicians, manage and sort medical documents within the EHR system, and assist with e-prescribing. Medical scribes can bethought of as data care managers, enabling physicians, medical assistants, and nurses to focus on patient in-take and care during clinic hours. Medical scribes, by handling data management tasks for physicians in real-time, free the physician to increase patient contact time, give more thought to complex cases, better manage patient flow through the department, and increase productivity to see more patients. http://www.rio.edu/gedt/Medical%20Transcription.html

University of Rio Grande and Rio Grande Community College does not discriminate based on race, creed, color, gender, religion, age, disability, or national origin. University of Rio Grande and Rio Grande Community College believes in equal opportunity practices that conform to both the spirit and the letter of the laws against discrimination. University of Rio Grande and Rio Grande Community College prohibits discrimination against any qualified person with a disability.

Medical Transcription Certificate

Medical Transcription Certificate 7-26-17JA

800.282.7201 • rio.edu

First Year

Fall

AHC 13302 Medical Terminology IAHC 10302 Electronic Health RecordsOT 10403 Keyboarding I*OT 27302 Medical Machine TranscriptionPHT 11103 Pharmacology for HRC IPHT 12103 Applied Science I

Spring

AHC 14302 Medical Terminology IIOT 11603 Keyboarding II—MedicalOT 28603 Word/Info Processing ApplicationsPHT 11203 Pharmacology for HRC IIPHT 12203 Applied Science IIOT 28803 Adv. Medical Machine Transcription

*Placement determined by testing.

**Prerequisite for this course is OT 10003 Beginning Keyboarding. Students must be able to type at least 40 wpm for 3-5 min. with 5 or less errors using proper keyboarding techniques before they are permitted to take this course. OT 10003 Beg. Keyboarding will be offered Fall Semester for those who need it.

Contacts: Vicki Crabtree, M.Ed.Co-ChairSchool of Health & Behavioral Sciences740-245-7316 vickiec@rio.edu