Physician Dictations

Sirius BPO Services offers Transcription Help to Private Physicians, Clinics and Transcription Vendors and our Transcription Partner program page outlines our method of alliances with Transcription Vendors. Sirius BPO Services accepts Medical dictations in various formats such as .dss, .wav, .dvf etc from Digital Recorders and from Dial-in Telephone dictations. Dictations from Digital recorders are generally of better quality audio to decipher and which results in better quality of Medical transcription. When physicians use Phone-in dictations, they can continue to use their provider and give access to the Phone-in server from where we can download the dictations for Medical transcription services. Otherwise they can opt to use our Phone-in service to deliver the dictations.

When the physicians use the most recommended digital recorders they have to download their dictations on their Local PC with the help of the Recorder cradle or a USB cable based on the make and model of the recorder. After that they can upload their Medical Notes using one of the methods described below.

Sirius recommends Olympus digital Recorder DS-4000 for its simplicity in operation for the physicians. Physicians were accustomed to tape based Dictaphones for a long time and the dictation itself is a process where they go back and forth on their dictations using REWIND and FORWARD operations. While they do this the physicians attention have to be in their Medical Notes or Previous records or Clinical Images and not on the buttons of REWIND and FORWARD. Olympus Digital recorder DS-4000 has a helpful Slide switch mechanism, so with their thumb on a single switch the Physicians can PLAY, FORWARD, PAUSE and REWIND.
Buy your Recorder at : http://www.startstop.com/

Another key feature on the simplicity is the way the dictations are transferred to the local PC. Olympus DS-4000 comes with a dictation module application in a CD and a charging cradle for the recorder. This Cradle had to be connected to the PC with the help of an USB port and the application installed on the local PC. Upon proper configuration whenever the dictation recorder is placed in the cradle, the application senses the recorder and automatically downloads the dictation from the digital recorder. These downloaded dictations can be configured to automatically come to our FTP server, or a manual upload can be initiated from the local PC.

Upload Medical Dictations

You will be given a website link upon signing the Medical Transcription service and you have to paste this link onto any web browser. It will ask for a username and password. Upon giving the right username and password, you will be shown your default dictation folder. You can simply drag your files from the local PC and paste it onto the folder. Now the upload process is over.

You may wish to drag and drop some files from your Local PC onto the Dictation folder on the server.
Click on the link below and use Username: guest   Password: guest123
ftp://ftp.siriuscorporation.com

You may wish to test upload a sample file.
Click on the link below, and click on "Secure Upload" for HIPAA compliant upload.
http://sirius.leapfile.com

You will be given a website link upon signing the Medical Transcription service and you have to paste this link onto any web browser.It will ask for a username and password. Upon giving the right username and password it will show a screen where there will be buttons to SELECT files and UPLOAD files. When you click on the SELECT button, you will be shown your local PC directory on a pop-up dialog. You can select the right loaction where your Dictations are kept and can click OK. Now you can click UPLOAD to upload your dictations. Your dictations will be uploaded in a secured way to our server now.

This method is more of an infrequently used method considering the security issues with email communications but still a preffered method when the medical transcription help is needed for a low volume of work and highly inconsistent. In this method you use any of your existing e-mail accounts and ATTACH the dictations upto a maximum of ten and send it to us at transcription@siriuscorporation.com. we will send a auto-response on the receipt of your mail and you can consider your dictations are delivered to us.

This is the most preferred method to send in your dictations because all your dictations will be uploaded in a secured way to a secured server, and you can monitor the entire process of the Medical transcription from Upload, to allocation statuses, to Transcription to Editing and you can get back your reports in the same application itself. This application also helps to verify the transcribed reports and do an Electronic Sign. The moment reports are signed they are available in a read-only format for further Auto fax and printing. You will be given a small application to be installed in your PC, or you can download that application from the site www.siriuscorporation.com. When you run this application you will be asked to authenticate yourself. The moment you authenticate with your username and password, you are open to all the features of this application based on your authentication level.

The Medical Transcription Process

Once we receive the dictations in our works, it is allocated to the appropriate team who is handling the said account. This allocation is manual when upload methods 1,2 and 3 are used and it is Auto or Manual when the Sirius ReportVault method is used for uploading the dictations.

The Dictations are played by the Medical Transcriptionist with the help of any industry standard players and control of the dictation is achieved with the help of a foot pedal which will PAUSE,PLAY,REWIND,FORWARD,STOP the dictation. The dictation is transcribed and typed onto a word processor or the ReportVault application by qualified and experienced Medical Transcriptionists. Transcriptionists get the help of STEDMANS Medical dictionary, QUICK-LOOK and other online DRUG Indexes to find out appropriate terminologies while in doubt. Whenever there is a persistent doubt the Medical transcriptionist always leaves a blank rather than filling it with a sound-alike(Homophone). Its always been an inherited rule in Sirius to leave blank when they are not 100% sure about a terminology. Medical Transcriptionists in Sirius are always trained in such a way that they always look into the context of a particular dictation rather than relying on the way it sounds. This adoption helps to prevent blunders slipping through.

After the Medical Transcriptionist completes the transcription process, the transcript is passed on to the Medical Editor. The Medical Editor goes through the complete dictation once again and keeping only the terminologies and the report context in mind. Any blanks left out by Medical transcriptionists are mostly filled out in this level as these Editors have a minimum of Five years of experience in providing Medical Transcription help.

When the Medical Editor is done with his/her job, the document is passed on to the proof reader who looks into the report for formatting errors as Pagination, Margins, Styles for specific clinics and physicians and so forth. The proof reader doesnt have to listen to the dictations and are not necessarily familiar in the context of the transcript. But these proofers are responsible for the overall account in terms of presentation and adherance to specific style requests.

Medical Report Delivery Methods:

When the Medical transcripts are ready to be delivered they are sent to the Physicians through E-mail, or Placed on FTP Server, or Made available in Sirius ReportVault - Electronic Storage and Distribution Application.

When the Transcribed reports are delivered through e-mail physicians or support staff can simply download the attached transcript in the e-mail to a pre-defined folder. The Reports will be in the formats as Word or WordPerfect or Plain Text as requested by the physician. These reports can be opened and verified and printed from their local PC.

When the reports are placed in the appropriate folder of the physician in our FTP folder, we will send an e-mail notification on the readiness of the transcribed report. Even if the e-mail notification is not sent, it is always available in a preset time of day. Physicians can log-in to the FTP server the same way they used while they uploaded the dictations, and can drag and drop their Reports onto their local PC. These reports can be further opened, verified and Printed with the help of appropriate applications.

When Reports are delivered through Sirius ReportVault they are always available in an Electronic Report storage archive. Physicians have to simply logon to the archive with the help of the client application installed in their PC. Now the Report can be directly Viewed and Signed. These Signed reports can be automatically Faxed or E-mailed to respective referring physicians or Patients or whomsoever concerned. Any previous and old reports can be searched using search criterias as PatientName, Date of Test, PatientID etc. All the inventory about how many dictations posted, how many were discarded, how many did not contain any dictation, how many got transcribed etc are all available on a few mouse clicks.

Types of Reports and Specialties we offer Help

Our Expertise are in Radiology Study Reports, History and Physical Reports, Consult Notes, Follow-Up Letters, Progress Notes and Clinic Notes.
And our Medical Transcriptionists are exposed in the following areas through our existing clients :

Report Turn-Around-Time

Normally for clinics and physicians who give us work in a regularly manner, we define our production process to deliver back the transcribed reports in 12 hours. i.e when you upload your dictations on the evening of your day, you get back your Transcribed reports on the following morning when you come back to the clinic. This is one of the key advantages of taking our Transcription Help services from India. This is our general practice. But for clinics or physicians who offload their work in the end of a week in a bulk manner, the TAT will be decided and committed on a case to case basis.

Accuracy

We have been delivering reports with an accuracy in the upward of 98%. We know it is not possible to measure the accuracy report by report for a Physician or a clinic. But our experience in this domain for almost a decade has helped us to fine tune ourselves and deliver reports in a most preferred manner and has attained us the Most preferred Vendor status with many of our physicians. We start an account with utmost care and we do rely on a library of older reports, which helps a lot; for that account to kick start on our accuracy scale. We insist on feedbacks or corrected reports for a week, and mostly in a week we get tuned to deliver the maximum quality possible for that particular Audio quality.

When we start an account, we always start with the most experienced team which we call as the Transition team. This Team consists of Medical Transcriptionists and Editors with the top most exposure and experience to various specialities. This team will handle the account and will help generate a library of reports of that account for atleast 3-4 weeks. Then this team will move the transcription activity to the production team slowly while helping and monitoring the quality of delivery. The production team will jump start on the accuracy levels with the help of the Library created by the transition team as one of the valuable resources to rely on.

Billing and Rates

We charge the physicians and the clinics on Report basis or Per line basis. The Report basis works out well for Radiology clinics most of the time. Otherwise per line basis is the widely accepted billing methodology. As per AAMT standards every line is considered as a 65 character line including spaces and special characters. We normally charge our line rates based on the Volume, Method of Upload and Delivery, Audio Quality of Dictation and Comprehension levels when we listen to it. We submit detailed invoices that shows No.of reports dictated on a day, No.of Lines on Each Report and Total No.of Lines per day. Usually these invoices are sent on the last day of the month and we expect a check to be posted on our name in ten days from the date of invoice. By Outsourcing Medical Transcription work, you will also get some cost advantage besides Consistency, Quality and better TAT.

HIPAA and our Compliance

The Health information Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 by law applies only to the covered entities and not the business associates. In our scenario the covered entities are the Clinics and Physician practices. Sirius BPO Services or its Partners in US are the Business associates. The covered entities are required to protect the privacy and confidentiality of the medical records and the patient identifiable information as Patient name, SSN, telephone number and Addresses. While the covered entity reveals this kind of information to the business associate, the covered entity should get a business associate agreement signed by the associate. References 45 CFR 164.502(e) 504(e) 532(d) and (e)

   We sign HIPAA Business associate agreements and abide by the regulations      to protect the interests of the covered entity.

   We sign individual HIPAA individual contractor agreements and Non-Disclosure      -agreements with our staff exposed to the patient identifiable information.

   We protect electronic patient data transfer through 128-bit SSL encryption      certificates and by Secured FTP and Email. Our sirius.leapfile.com file transfer      protocol is HIPAA compliant.

   Our staff are continuously trained and updated on HIPAA regulations and our      PCs and programs are Password protected and are prevented from using      removable media.

   Our Servers are located in Date centers that are Firewall-ed and access      protected.

   We continue to dedicate our effort and keep updated on the amendments of      the HIPAA regulations to give a safe working environment to our covered      entities.

Quality of our Medical Transcription Staff

When we choose Medical Transcriptionists we always choose Science or English graduation as their fundamental education. The science graduation helps them to quick start on the Anatomy and the medical terminologies, and english graduation helps good listening comprehension from the dictations. On top of that they must have completed a 6-months course on Medical Terminologies and Medical Transcription and should have good exposure in computer OS and related word processing and other activities. Candidates with this background are chosen and are trained in-house on cross specialties and are assigned in to a specific Live account after three months. These Medical Transcriptionists are also swaped between Accounts on a three month interval to help them keep updated across specialities.

Our Editors possess atleast five years of experience in the domain and who have the fundamentals as mentioned for the Medical transcriptionists. Our Editors have membership in many on-line forums to get exposed to the latest trends and technology in the field and they share this in our conference rooms in regular intervals. STEDMANS Suite of On-line Dictionary, Quicklook, Drug-Index 2007, AAMT are a few helpful contributors to the quality of our staff. Not to mention their Dedication, Sincerity and Committment-to-the-task plays a vital role in nurturing the Quality and hence the relationship with our unwavering clientele to our Medical Transcription Services .

Pre-requisites to start and use our Medical Transcription services

Before we start offering you our Medical transcription help, we might need the following to be given from your side. This helps us to jump start on the quality of delivery from the day one.

If you do not have a previous dictation history and start off fresh then we will suggest you the templates and formats using AAMT standards and shall close-in mutually.