Starting Your Own Medical Transcription Business
by Margery Hinman, CMT
According to the predictions of the United States Department of Labor, the MT industry
will expand at a greater than average rate through the year 2012. The health care industry
will need 158,000 more professionals in this field to keep up with baby boomers that are
becoming senior citizens and will require more medical care.
In this profession, there is great demand for qualified personnel, and much job security
for those who meet the need and produce quality work. Medical transcription is one of the
few legitimate work at home jobs a person can train for. This article will focus on how to
start your own Medical Transcription business.
Education
To work professionally in this field, you first must get quality education. The best
education for medical transcription is to enroll with a well-known on-line MT school. Many
community colleges offer MT training, but since community colleges must meet the needs of
the community they do not gear their training toward work at home MTs and they frequently
throw in courses like filing, office procedures, etc.
This takes away from the time you need to practice transcribing. Additionally, the best
dictation tapes for training are the SUM CDs, and the community colleges cannot afford for
every student to have a full set of these CDs, so students seldom get a chance in just one
semester to transcribe all of the necessary reports that will assist one in becoming a qualified MT.
Getting Started
One you are adequately trained as an MT, you will probably wish to work for a national MT
service where your work will pass through an MT editor for a few months. This will give
you time to gain confidence, and will assist in ironing out any deficits that you may have
in your skill set.
After you are thoroughly trained and confident in your skills, you are probably going to
want to cut out the middle man (the national service), and contract with local physicians
yourself. There is much money to be paid in launching out in this direction. You will first
need to make sure that you have a good home office set up including a good computer system,
quality printer, fax machine, and adequate office space.
You will also need to decide how much you will charge for your services and what services
you will offer. Are you willing to find addresses for letters? Are you willing to print
the reports? Are you willing to mail letters? It is important not to undercharge for your
services as this drives rates down in your area. The idea for a successful business is to
charge competitively but to offer a few additional services.
Start up Expenses
Start up expenses vary greatly depending upon how many clients you want initially and if
you intend to work from a home office or rent office space. You must figure the expense
for an initial mass mailing, advertising expenses, initial office set up, and how you will
pay for the dictation equipment, and or digital services. Most small MT businesses could
get off the ground with just a few thousand dollars.
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