A Medical Transcriptionist Career Could Be Just What The Doctor Ordered

A Medical Transcriptionists career could pay off well for those seeking to update their career training. As thousands of jobs are being outsourced and sent overseas in every sector, for those fortunate enough to be within the employment ranks as medical transcriptionists, this sector is projected to grow faster than average for all jobs through 2013. Demand for medical transcription services will be fueled by a growing and aging population. Older age groups receive more medical tests, treatments, and procedures that require documentation. A high level of demand for transcription services also will be sustained by the continued need for electronic documentation that can easily be shared among providers, third-party payers, regulators, consumers, and health information systems.

Growing numbers of medical transcriptionists will be needed to and identify discrepancies in medical reports, amend patients’ records, and edit documents from speech recognition systems . An increasing demand for standardized records should result in rapid employment growth in physicians’ offices, especially in large group practices. Medical transcriptionists held strong employment representation with about 105,000 jobs in 2004. About 4 out of 10 worked in hospitals and another 3 out of 10 worked in offices of physicians. Others worked for business support services; medical and diagnostic laboratories; outpatient care centers; and offices of physical, occupational and speech therapists, and audiologists.Compensation methods for medical transcriptionists vary. Some are paid based on the number of hours they work or on the number of lines they transcribe. The higher earners can forseeably expect more than $20 an hour.

Work conditions that some would envy are what many Medical Transcriptionist encounter. Professional transcriptionist can look forward to working in comfortable settings such as hospitals, physicians’ offices, transcription service offices, clinics, laboratories, medical libraries, government medical facilities, or their own homes. Many medical transcriptionists telecommute from home-based offices as employees or subcontractors for hospitals and transcription services or as self-employed, independent contractors.

Many medical transcriptionists work a standard 40-hour week. Self-employed medical transcriptionists are more likely to work irregular hours—including part time, evenings, weekends, or on call at any time. The future of medical transcriptionist jobs appear to be healthy and bright and shows no sign up declining anytime in the foreseeable future.