Five Great Reasons to Become a Medical Transcriptionist
By Pam Lyon
There are many reasons why someone would want to become a Medical Transcriptionist. It
is an absolutely critical element of quality health care, as every time a patient is seen
by his or her physician notes on that visit are placed in the patient's medical records.
Accurate transcription of the doctor's dictation is vital in portraying the patient's
medical condition, especially if he or she should be referred to a different physician.
Some of the reasons you might consider becoming a transcriptionist are:
1. Medical transcription is a critical and honorable profession.
It's been said that the United States is the best place in the world to be if you are
sick. One of the reasons for that is that we have quality transcriptionists making sure
the details of every doctor's visit is accurately entered into a patient's medical records.
If we did not have fast, reliable transcriptionists keeping medical records up to date,
we would have a great deal of mistakes in health care!
2. There is an ongoing need for true professionals.
According to the U.S. Government Dept. of Labor, there will be a great need for
transcriptionists over other occupations through 2016: "Employment of medical
transcriptionists is projected to grow 14 percent from 2006 to 2016, faster than the
average for all occupations. Demand for medical transcription services will be spurred by
a growing and aging population. Older age groups receive proportionately greater numbers
of medical tests, treatments, and procedures that require documentation. The current
population of medical transcriptionists is aging and retiring. There are not enough
transcriptionists entering the field to keep up with the demand. And guess what? People
continue to go to the doctor!
3. There is definitely potential to work from home. You could be a telecommuting
employee, or an independent contractor.
The freedom to have a 30-second commute is a powerful lure, but there is more: you also
get to set your own hours, pretty much, when you work at home. Like working at 3AM? That's
cool... Once you have established yourself in the business with several years of experience,
there is no end of opportunities out there for you to work at home; some small doctors
group in your town is bound to be in need of help, and you'll find there is probably a
fairly large network of independent transcriptionists referring work to each other.
4. There is the potential to build your own business with an income limited only by
your willingness to work hard.
You can be your only employee, or you can have a whole "stable" of transcriptionists
adding to your income. Some of the largest transcription firms today began as one-person
businesses. The more people you have working for you, the less you have to work at
transcribing yourself, as you will be taking part of your employees' per-line rate for
yourself - or rather, part of the rate you charge the client will be skimmed off the top
before you pay your employees. The income potential is really limited only by your ability
to bring in new clients and keep a stable of reliable transcriptionists working.
5. The work is absolutely fascinating on a continual basis.
Each report is different from every other, since every patient is different from every
other. It's fascinating to see how two people can have ostensibly the same condition, yet
their different physical makeups can cause very different symptoms to appear. Since you
would probably be in the field for several years, the chances are fairly great that you
would migrate from one specialty area to another over time. Boredom will surely be
alleviated if you change specialties, with the new terminology, and the new doctors'
speaking patterns and idiosyncrasies.
Pam Lyon is the author of
Inside Medical Transcription
- the real truth about the life of a medical transcriptionist. Pam is a 30-year veteran of the
Transcription business, and has seen it all. Get a 20-page excerpt of the book just for coming by!
| 
About BTH
User Agreement
Privacy
Site Map
Contact
News Feeds
RSS Feed
Follow @Stephen Bucaro
Start Your Own Web Business
