Doctors apprehensive on ‘outsourcing’ transcription services

One of the reasons why doctors in the United States are reluctant in ‘outsourcing’ transcription services from other countries is because very few people are fluent in spoken or written English language skills in these outsourcing destinations.
Medical transcription is a specialized field, where a transcriber needs to be familiar with medical terminology, and should have the ability to understand different vocabularies and accents of doctors, besides knowing the names of prescribed drugs.
The other ‘bother’ doctors have is the breach of confidentiality of medical records, which in spite of procedures and regulations of HIPAA followed by them in principle, may not be the case in outsourced destinations, many people are protective about their health information, which they consider to be ‘sensitive’.
Doctors also feel that the involvement in setting processes and systems of communications with the outsourced vendor and training non native English speakers living in a different part of the world can be a tasking exercise, and if things took a different direction, the entire effort could go down the drain. Then the thought on quality of services also is a matter of debate, will the outsourced vendor assure me the quality of service my in-house team is providing to the patients.
All said and done, in spite of these apprehensions, when doctors realize that they could save 50% to 60% on operational costs by outsourcing it to India or Philippines, the ‘negative’ features of outsourcing become secondary, and of very little concern.

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