Control Your Destiny!
Break out of the outsourcing prison today
While a majority of healthcare facilities in North America are outsourcing their transcription activities in a bid to reduce backlogs and cut costs, entrusting an outsourcing partner is easier said than done. In these times of billing irregularities and the mishandling of medical records, choosing to outsource transcription can prove a daunting decision for healthcare providers, who, in addition to HIPAA and security concerns, are faced with the following ownership challenges:
- 1. Do we still own the data?
Can we access it when our contract ends? Who really owns the data? - 2. What are we billed for exactly?
Is the billing system clear enough? Are we charged more if we need to reprint certain reports, for instance? - 3. Are we being cornered?
What if we want to move from one service provider to another?
Most transcription services today are still using proprietary technology; a contradiction in regards to the busy agenda the healthcare sector is facing at the moment. How are healthcare providers supposed to cut costs, improve turnaround and reliability of data and, ultimately, quality of patient care when third-party vendors are laying an embargo upon their data?
Here is how the Crescendo technology can help you break free using the simplest and most commonly accepted tools: industry standards.
1. Get hold of your data
Let's take the example of a service using a proprietary transcription system. The impact for your organization is twofold:
- Your data is being secluded, prisoner of a closed system, the language of which is understood by no other.
- Any attempt to access your data, let alone import it to other systems, turns into an expensive maneuver as significant fees will be charged to develop a custom interface to "translate" the data from one system to another.
To re-establish full ownership of your data, you need:
- A transcription service that supports industry standards (i.e.: HL7, XML and Microsoft® Word)
- A central, open system within your organization that can import and export the data into the right formats, especially if your organization deals with several vendors for dictation, transcription, medical records, EMR, HIS, etc. With the Crescendo systems, pure products of open source technology, this software variety is no longer a barrier to building the integrated IT environments that are so critical to the quality of patient care.
2. Streamline and monitor your workflow
The diversity of your IT environment might also result in extreme worklflow complexity and associated headaches, unless you use MedRouter as your workflow manager.
From voice capture to final report distribution and import into your medical records, HIS, CIS, RIS, etc., this integrated component of MedRite-XL:
- Automatically handles all imports and exports
- Supervises transcribed files
- Automatically names, files, faxes, e-mails, carbon copies and prints the report based on predefined settings, whether on a per user, Work Type, Department or Facility basis.
The Crescendo systems were designed as true enterprise solutions, ready to handle the most complex workflows regardless of the number of users, premises or third party vendors involved, as Ginny Kent, Transcription Manager, Battle Creek Health System, explains: "In the old days, we used to distribute reports by batch as opposed to the automated, continuous workflow we are now experiencing site-wide thanks to MedRouter. Reports are now delivered exactly where and when they need to be, day and night." Read full story.
3. Eliminate demographics fees and increase the reliability of medical data
The suite of HL7 interfaces from Crescendo provides as many "open doors" inside your workflow environment as you may need. Here are a few examples of how, by using the HL7 industry standard, you can say goodbye to demographic fees:
- The Crescendo HL7 ADT Interface recognizes Author and Subject demographic data inside foreign systems and merges them into the central database, eliminating the need to enter demographic information manually. This data feed can be extended to your service without any additional customization or cost!
- If your service does not support HL7 ADT, the report is returned in HL7 or Microsoft® Word format. The system will then match the ADT data and appropriately populate the report when imported into your system while systematically flagging any issue that occurs.
4. Stop paying for ADT, templates, headers or footers
5. Audit your bills
6. Control your destiny!
The electronic medical record may be the hot topic of the moment, however medical transcription remains the key source for populating electronic medical records . It sometimes even stands for medical records, hence the need for your organization to gain full ownership and control of all transcribed data, whether it is today or ten years down the road.
Beyond immediate cost savings, what Crescendo is offering your organization is flexibility over a much longer term. Now that you can access your data at will and manage it the way you want to, your outsourcing horizon clears up. You are free to change service at any time without being charged for interfaces to import the data from your old transcription system to the new one. You are free to choose the transcription service that you want, when you want. This is the Crescendo promise in action.
- Battle Creek Health System: multi-campus healthcare provider controls transcription outsourcing like never before and builds an integrated workflow environment
