Part - II

(To read Part I, click on the �Previous Article� link, on the left)

The medical transcription industry seems immune to the law of supply and demand. With a severe shortage of qualified MTs worldwide and high demand, transcription pay and prices should have risen accordingly. Instead, they have remained stagnant or fallen. In combination with rising healthcare costs and reduced reimbursements, this is unfortunately largely due to a lack of standards in the industry and buyers who are unaware of somewhat creative pricing structures used to make a price sound more competitive. Even a pricing unit such as a page can become debatable. I recently worked with a local physician�s office that was proud to have solved the problem of ambiguous pricing by requiring their transcription service to charge by the page, which they could easily verify if they chose to do so. However, when asked if they were charged a full page for every page, even pages with only signature lines on them, they were unsure. It became apparent to me that although they selected a page as a unit for ease of billing verification, they had never actually verified the accuracy of their bills. At another, I found the transcription service had won the contract by proposing a relatively low per-page rate, and then reformatted all the documents with a large font, wide margins and lots of tabulated and indented paragraphs, which significantly reduced the number of characters that would fit on one page. It�s the same as finding out the �larger rooms� advertised at a cheap hotel aren�t due to expansion of space, but to removal of furniture!

Unfortunately, because of the shortage of qualified transcriptionists, buyers have also found that price probably doesn�t make much difference in the quality being delivered. One healthcare industry consultant told me that when his clients have turnaround or quality issues with their transcription service, he rides the service until there�s improvement. I refrained from telling him that while he was improving the product delivered to his client, somewhere in the U.S., another hospital was going out of TAT and having quality issues as a result � and that shortly after he walked back out the door, satisfied that his consulting fees were well earned, his client�s product delivery would suffer again when another consultant walked in the door of the other hospital or the medical records director read the riot act to the transcription service. It�s the business version of musical chairs. And if a facility perceives that paying 22 cpl won�t get them any better service or quality than paying 10 cpl, it would be foolish to pay the higher rate. After all, anyone who ordered a hamburger meal at Delmonico�s for $12.95 and got two all-beef burgers, special sauce, onions, tomatoes and lettuce on a sesame-seed bun with fries would soon realize they could get the same thing at McDonald�s for $4.95.

This brings up what I call the �reality factor� � the difference between the promise and the product. I don�t care if the transcription is guaranteed to be 99.9% accurate after being checked by four former M.D.s in two countries then blessed by a CMT or even a saint or two � if the client is complaining, then there�s a quality problem. Anyone who markets their service on price to the U.S. healthcare industry is going to find themselves caught up in a never-ending battle with the client over quality. There is no assumption on the client�s part that a lower price equates to a compromise in delivery and/or quality, nor should there be if marketing and sales to the client have touted 99.9% accuracy and 12-hour TAT. In all honesty, who would even want to admit to less? �Only 90% accuracy, but cheap!� probably wouldn�t be the most popular marketing slogan on the planet, even if truth in advertising were in vogue.

Continued�

(To read Part III, click on the �Next� link, below)


Julianne Weight
CEO
AlphaBest LLC