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Medical Transcription Overview
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MT Home
Business Preparation When you are about three-quarters of the way through your MT training course, start REALLY planning your home business. My suggested laundry list of "must gets" includes the following, and their rationale is detailed below.
1. A comfortable, practical office. YOUR OFFICE AND EQUIPMENT: You will need to have a "real" office -- not just the kitchen table where you've parked your computer and medical dictionary for the duration of your course. Yes, if you HAVE to, you can work anywhere as necessity dictates, and I'm not talking about spending $10,000 on a office to be photographed for Architectural Digest. In my opinion, however, you will need a corner away from the traffic and activity of your home where you can work in quiet and peace. (This is a business - not a hobby!) You'll need a large desk or work area with space enough to accommodate your reference library (within a quick hand's reach). You'll require at least one filing cabinet to store paid invoices, bank statements, all the relevant files necessary to running a business -- plus copies of your billing sheets and invoices, etc. You'll need at least one business phone line - more if you want a separate line for your fax and (possibly) a phone-in dictation system. Of course, you'll need a telephone answering device. (Many MT's don't personally answer the phone while they are working but let the machine pick up their calls for them.) Check into one of the combination fax machines that can adapt to a TAD. While your word processing software can send faxes and other software can receive them, you may find it more efficient to have a stand-alone fax machine from the start. You'll need a good quality printer that can stand up to heavy requirements -- but it doesn't have to be the most expensive model. Many clients require laser-quality printing, and most supply their own stationery. Many MT's use ink-jet printers, but many also prefer the actual laser printers. You may even have to have a dot matrix printer available for some clients who use continuous-form documents, but personally I'd wait for this request. You'll need a transcriber to match the size of tapes your clients use -- and of course you don't know that yet, do you! In my area, most offices use the micro cassettes, but some still use standard size and others use minis. Luckily, these machines are readily available at most office supply houses. You'll need a good, ergonomically sound chair (probably THE most important item you'll buy), good, non-glare lighting, and adequate heat and air conditioning to be comfortable. Remember - your income will be measured by productivity, and an uncomfortable MT can't produce quality work for very long. Making sure that the ergonomics of your work area suit you can prevent tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome from making this a very short career. I'm assuming you will use the same computer for work that you are using for your MT training, but here's something to think about. As users upgrade to the speed-of-light Pentium systems, there are good, used 486 systems available everywhere for very little money. Consider getting one and using it for a true backup system -- to backup your data on a daily basis, and to use for backup should your main system fail. Just as you don't want to hear excuses from your electric company in an emergency (you want the electric power they've promised to provide), your clients depend on you to maintain the turnaround time you have agreed to. They don't care if your hard drive exploded or if the cat had her kittens on your printer... they care about their work being delivered on time. It's very cheap and easy to establish a link with a second computer and you can have a fail-safe business system for under $1000, including a spare printer. This can be a great marketing advantage for you and can relieve your stress immensely when your main system goes down -- and they all do. Even if your finances don't allow for an auxiliary system now, you MUST have a proven, efficient method of doing daily backups. This may mean a whole tribe of diskettes, a tape drive, a "Zip" drive or similar device, etc. The data (including your word processor program, productivity software and all associated configuration files as well as confidential client files) on your system is an asset of your company and represents a significant investment of time and money. There is no reason to ever lose data that is older than your most recent backup -- which should be no longer than eight hours ago (your current workday). There WILL be a time when you have to recover from backup - it's as certain as wrinkles, death and taxes. A savvy business person will only have to load the last backup, and WILL NEVER have to reconstruct data from weeks or months ago. You owe it to yourself and to your clients to be "ready for business" at all times, and a regular backup of your data is the first step in readiness. The second step in providing a secure backup method is TESTING the recovery process.... and the best time to test is before you have "live" files at risk. REFERENCE LIBRARY: I know an in-house transcriptionist whose only reference book is a PDR -- but then, she has 15 years' experience and daily access to all the dictating providers. For someone who is new to the field AND starting a home business where the only source of information is YOU, YOU need a complete reference library before you ever solicit work. The ideal is to be able to not only find the mystery word or phrase but verify it -- which means redundant resources when possible. Remember, in the view of many experienced MT's, you are going out on a skinny limb by starting to work from home without on-the-job experience first. You must provide an excellent safety net for your accuracy, precision and productivity -- especially as you start out. Resist the temptation to skimp on this part of the financial outlay for your home business. Medical transcription is one of the leaner businesses in start-up costs, but start-up costs are a part of any home business, and your references are your most valuable tool of your trade. Here are my suggestions:
In addition, you should have a Zip Code book, listings of medical providers if available from your local hospitals, and telephone books to cover all your nearby areas. If your training course has provided good references (such as tables of lab normals, style guides, etc.), organize these into a binder for quick lookup. After three years, I still use some of my class references. You will not use every book every day -- and some books will be used maybe once a year. I've always felt that if a particular reference book only gives you one accurate phrase EVER - it's paid for itself by helping you produce an accurate, professional report. Another valuable method to use for your research is the Internet, including web sites like BusinessKnowHow.com. When all of your in-house references have failed and you are stuck, many of the participants on the message boards will gladly assist you with those garbled words you just can't figure out. Also, be aware that a few will not be as eager to help and may chide you for asking what to them is a "simple" question. As long as you have exhausted your resources and applied a good bit of common sense, don't sweat the rude replies you may get -- just be grateful for the helpful MT's that understand what it's like to be new and nervous. There are also extensive medical and pharmaceutical web sites that can (eventually) yield the answer - although it may take awhile. It's well worth your time to learn where these sites are and how to effectively search the net. The Internet, including BusinessKnowHow.com, also provide great networking resources, with the participants sharing their wisdom, methods, problems, solutions, challenges and encouragement daily. As most of us work alone, it can be a supportive environment and a source of real friendships as well as up-to-date information. PRODUCTIVITY SOFTWARE: In case you are unaware of them, there are some wonderful software programs available to the MT to increase our productivity and accuracy. These are medical spellers and dictionaries that work within your word processor so you can check your spelling, look up words even if you have just a beginning, middle or ending sound, check definitions and plurals without lugging out your 15-pound dictionary, and even count stuff for you. Also on your list of "must haves" is a word expansion utility program which works within your word processor to increase your typing speed up to 70% and save corresponding wear and tear on your hands, wrists and arms. To my knowledge, these four popular programs are currently favored by working MT's: Flash Forward, Smartype, PRD and Instant Text. Briefly, these programs work by "filling in" the word or phrase after you type the beginning of that word or phrase or an abbreviation; these phrases and abbreviations are either set up by you or come as part of the software. For instance, if I want to type "the patient" nine thousand times a day, all I do on my system (using Flash) is type tp then add punctuation or press the space bar. Flash fills in "the patient" for me quicker than ever I could type it. I also have all my Word Perfect macros set up within Flash so I never have to use the Alt-F10 key + macro name, but simply type a quick abbreviation. Each of the word expanders has slightly different features and each has their own advantages and disadvantages. Not all work with all popular word processors, some don't work with Windows, etc. None are very expensive (under $300 generally), and I don't see how anyone could (or would want to) transcribe without one. Research these programs and choose the one you feel would suit you best. If you buy one of the programs that does NOT come with an established word list, you probably don't want to jump the gun setting up abbreviations too far ahead of your actual work as you will tailor your word lists to each provider. However, you will want to consider your abbreviation schemes carefully and allow for plenty of expansion as both you and your business grow. OTHER SOFTWARE PROGRAMS: Your business will require a method to track income and expenses and provide you with year-end tax information and other data you need to know as a business owner/operator. There are many of these programs on the market and most are both inexpensive and readily learned. One word of advice -- USE the program you buy. Record keeping is absolutely required for every business and there are serious consequences (read: wrath of the IRS!) to NOT knowing and following the rules. It's a good idea to consult with a tax accountant as you plan your business. There are many valuable deductions available to you as a business owner, and a good tax person can get you started on the right track. You will also want to research line-counting software that works with your word processor. There are various ways to bill your clients with the "amount per line" currently the most common and accepted method. A "line" can be any number of characters agreed upon by you and your client, but the standard is usually 65 characters. Most of the popular programs have user-defined parameters to accommodate variances in billing.
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