Today, new and confounding infectious diseases threaten health. Moreover, diseases that were considered extinct are reappearing. Infectious diseases specialists are also faced with challenges such as rising patient volume and compliance with ICD-10 coding. Many practices lack the financial and manpower resources to deal with increased volumes, technological change, or workflow changes. Infectious disease transcription services play a significant role in helping them maintain legible, timely, complete, precise, and accurate documentation.
Documentation Challenges facing Infectious Diseases Specialists
Recent outbreaks such as Zika, Ebola, chikungunya, measles, and other diseases are among the infectious diseases that have given the government and physicians sleepless nights. Besides providing timely care, infectious diseases specialists need to stay in business with proper documentation for ICD-10 compliance. This means:
- Documenting the acuity of the disease e.g. chronic, acute, etc.
- Specifying the site of infection or infestation (e.g., Tuberculosis of adrenal glands)
- Documenting the specific cause of the infection or infestation
- Document any information regarding any secondary disease process related to an infection (e.g., TB associated with HIV)
- Documenting the known or suspected organism associated with an infection
Documentation for a disease such as pneumonia should define type of pneumonia, whether viral, bacterial or aspiration, the causal agent, related diseases and associated medication or drug use, and more. Treating infectious diseases also presents many challenges such as the absence of effective vaccines and medications.
Managing their medical transcription can be quite difficult in this scenario.
Benefits of Outsourcing Transcription Tasks
A reliable medical transcription company can help infectious diseases specialists streamline their documentation processes, reduce operational costs, and increase ROI. Their medical transcriptionists can provide accurate and timely transcripts of patient charts, Emergency Room reports, history and physicals, progress notes, chart notes, surgery notes and discharge summaries. These cost-effective solutions would be EMR friendly too and ensure compliance with HIPAA and HL7 standards.
Before outsourcing their medical transcription, it is crucial that physicians ensure that the company has sufficient experience in providing documentation for the infectious disease specialty. It’s also important that the company has medical transcriptionists who are certified, well-trained and experienced.
Established service providers offer a great deal of flexibility with several options.
- Dictation via digital recording, toll-free telephone, conference call recording, or smartphone
- File submission in any type of format
- Customized turnaround time
With professional infectious disease transcription services, physicians can dedicate their time to resolving the challenge of examining, diagnosing, and treat complex conditions.
