Career Opportunities
Medical Transcription provides unlimited intellectual challenge and the opportunity to make a unique contribution to quality patient care and service. Health care is a rapidly growing field, and the demand for quality documentation is increasing. The profession provides a high level of job security, and skilled medical language specialists may receive a premium for their services. Because their services are in demand, transcriptionists are often able to arrange convenient and flexible work schedules. Medical Transcription is a portable skill that allows for professional and geographic mobility.
Age restrictions are seldom found, with great value being placed on the experience and knowledge of the mature transcriptionists. Medical Transcription can be a lifelong, satisfying career, providing the constant challenge of an expanding and advancing technology. The changes occurring in the healthcare industry promise to provide even more challenges to the forward-looking medical language specialist.
Medical Transcription is a high-paying career in one of the most stable and always growing industries – health care. We estimate that there is a total of over 67 billion lines of transcription done annually, in the US. The industry lends itself to telecommunications, both in the US and Internationally. While most transcription related to patients seen in the United States continues to be done within its boundaries, much of it is done across state lines and an increasing amount is done offshore (India, Philippines, Ireland, Bermuda etc, ) through telecommunication systems and the Internet.
The U.S Department of Labor says there will be a 61% increase in MTs (Medical Transcriptionists) needed by the year 2010. This means that demand will exceed the supply. This forecast applies to most developed countries, including those with Government health systems such as Canada, Great Britain and Australia. They have similar needs and therefore opportunities. The medical industry is virtually recession-proof. If you become proficient at medical transcription, you will probably always have work. If you are good at it, you can certainly make a good living. At an average, a newbie MT transcribing about 500+ lines per day accurately, in an eight-hour shift earns about Rs 10,000 per month.
A dedicated, hardworking and experienced medical transcriptionist can certainly earn upwards of Rs 15,000 per month, depending on how many lines one transcribes accurately per day. Your income is directly proportionate to your effort; MTs are paid on a production basis – by the line, by the word, by the page etc. Also, making it a home-based business can be very personally rewarding. Tax incentives for a home-based business, home-office, or small-business which is an 100% EOU, can be quite good. Once you have the skill and the equipment, you are only limited by how many clients you can service. With more experience, qualified medical transcriptionists who wish to expand their professional responsibilities may choose to become department heads, supervisors, managers or owners of medical transcription services. Experienced medical language specialists may become teachers, working in schools and colleges and educating future medical transcriptionists.
Services and institutions are literally desperate to find qualified MTs. To overcome this shortfall, companies such Medi-KareOnline have developed their own in-house training programs for training MTs, supervisors and editors in India. The course is spread over six month and includes English Grammar, Medical Terminology and Human Anatomy, special emphasis on American spoken and written English and hands-on transcription of medical dictation.
Many popular publications review medical transcription as a home business, citing the potential for high income with little investment. Courses in medical transcription are proliferating, some offering quick fixes for students interested in becoming business owners. Failure to make the investment in quality education can result not only in business failure but also in shoddy documentation for the real client, the patient. Most often rumors circulating about how much money is involved seem to be the driving force behind the desire to be an independent MT contractor. Experienced MTs are lured by the enhanced paycheck(s) every month, compared to someone working “in-house,” but this is fallacy. If you are working with a MT service provider, in addition to workspace, equipment, and supplies, your employer is contributing to your salary in the form of perks and benefits. For most independents there is no sick or vacation time, medical benefits, insurance or provident fund schemes. Also most employers invest in continued education and training, while providing for perks like conveyance, catering services and terminal benefits.
Performing medical transcription as a home-based business is not a “get rich quick scheme.” If you are an enlightened person, you know there is really no way to get rich without a lot of hard work. Medical transcription is hard work but can be very rewarding both financially and personally. However, if you think that having your own business is a way to sit back and let the money roll in, you could not be farther from the truth. The transcriptionist working from home must make a significant investment in equipment and reference material and be willing to make frequent updates to both equipment and library in order to keep up with rapidly changing technology and terminology.
Careful planning and the advice of legal and financial experts are essential to the success of a home-based business. If you are not willing to make personal sacrifices and work smart and / or hard, you are not the kind of person to have your own business. A significant factor is that small projects are not suitable for offshore outsourcing. This is because of the greater time involved in the initial communication, project specifications and other set up offset the saving. Hence you have to have business size over the “critical mass.”
Indian Advantage To The world
MT Services are a strategic and imperatively fit for India as it offers immense jobs opportunities and ability to earn foreign exchange. A majority of the State Governments in India are offering incentives and infrastructure for setting up these services. Central Government has provided Income Tax exemption to profits from export of these services. Vocational colleges have started teaching the skills for these services. Moreover, setting up of these services is not capital intensive and is entrepreneur driven. India has emerged as the preferred Global Destination and the hub of MT Services. Amongst others, it offers cost and quality advantages plus much more:
- A virtual 12-hour time zone difference between India and USA offers cost and time savings.
- A huge pool of English speaking and computer literate graduate workforce who can continue to cater to the growing demand of professionals for MT services.
- With more than 115 ISO 9000 certified and four SEI Level 5 Software Companies, India offers the ultimate quality advantage with relatively less costs.
- Indian enjoys very strong brand equity in major markets, thanks to its globally competitive software industry.
- A special thrust has been given by Department of Telecommunications, Government of India with reduction in prices of High Speed Datacom lease circuits.
- Thrust by government of India by providing Income Tax exemption to profits from exports of MT Services.
- Central and State Governments as well as private sector are setting up state-of-art infrastructure for MT Services including IT Habitats.
Nasscom has constituted a Vision Group for IT Enabled Services (MT is classified as an IT Enabled service in India). This is a special forum mandated with the task of identifying opportunity segments in the areas of IT Enabled Services. The Nasscom group would also devise specific strategies for market development, encouraging enterpreseneurship and positioning India as a global hub for IT Enabled Services.
The following table projects present status & potential of employment and earning opportunities from MT Services:
| Year |
1998 |
2010 (Projected) |
| Workforce employed |
3,800 |
1,60,000 |
| Rs. (in crores) |
140 |
11,000 (Source: NASSCOM) |
Nasscom is following a two pronged strategy for India’s success in I.T. Enabled Services. The first part involves continuous lobby with Government if India for removing procedural and bottlenecks. Some of the demand include: income tax exemption; single window clearance at Department of Telecommunication; global telecom infrastructure in India; lowering if tariff and more availability of venture capital and marketing funds. In this regard, Nasscom’s lobby was very successful to get income tax exemption to profits derived from most of the I.T. Enabled Services under Section 80 HHE of the Income Tax Act.
The second strategy involves awareness, marketing as well as catalyzing quality training of workforce. This is being done by organizing conferences and workshops and publishing useful publications for enthusiastic entrepreneurs. Nasscom has already mounted a campaign for marketing India’s advantage in this sector.
The slogan at Nasscom is “Move Work to India.”
Future Trends & Review
Ones of the biggest fallout of our success in the software industry has been the creation of another huge opportunity i.e. IT enabled services. Though somewhat unheralded, the emergence of this industry is only logical. Our success in software export was based on simple value proposition, “World class services at a less than world-class price.”
Clearly, this value proposition applies beyond software, to a variety of back office functions such as medical transcription, call centers, legal databases and insurance claims processing. The same competitive pressures that are leading companies to out source software development are in operation here. Perhaps even more so as many of these functions, is even lesser core to the company. This market estimated to be over a whopping trillion dollar in the next few years.
The good news is that in these areas, manpower is far more abundant than software. And this manpower is available not just in the metros. Most of the infrastructure bottlenecks, that such an industry would have faced five years ago, have already been cleaned up as a result of the focus on software exports. The international recognition that we have received in software is going to make it far easier for companies to sell the concept of outsourcing IT enabled services to India from overseas.
There is a very strong opportunity in Medical Transcription services. However, the last few year have witnessed consolidation in this industry. This is due to increasing maturity and decreasing differentiation between service providers. However, vendors may attempt to provide value differentiation by developing special features within constant cost bracket. Industry also perceives intelligent voice recognition software as a potential concern. However, in spite of the advances in this technology, it has been difficult for the computer to grasp and analyze the human voice and the English language with all its diversity. It will continue to be a need for skilled medical language specialists who expand their education and have the knowledge to identify and edit the inevitable errors created by speech recognition systems, and who have enough understanding of the health record to create an accurate final document. Medical transcriptionists will remain the best qualified to discern the nuances of human speech-indeed, the ultimate speech processors.
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