With the drive towards Electronic Medical Record (EMR) implementation and ‘meaningful use’ by 2014 gathering pace, healthcare providers are in a hurry to transcribe their written health care documents and notes into electronic format and enter them in a secure database. The billing and coding process has also become complicated in recent years due to the intense scrutiny by payers. As the documentation requirements continue to increase, crowdsourcing is gaining popularity in the medical field, especially in the area of medical transcription to help in the effective management of the complex health care system.
So what exactly is crowdsourcing? It’s the process of getting work done online by a crowd of people who can be spread across various locations in the world. So crowdsourcing or microsourcing as it is also called, is simply outsourcing work to a crowd of workers.
What is intriguing is that crowdsourcing is becoming popular in medical transcription, an area where proper training and adherence to government regulations is important. The fact is that crowdsourcing is possible in this field as several Internet-based training courses and programs are available for people to learn transcription online. Crowdsourcing has created a wider base of medical transcriptionists who can perform the task in a cost-effective manner.
While implementing a big data management system, whether on-premise or in the cloud, a healthcare provider would need to invest heavily on hardware and software. The provider would also need to hire permanent staff as well as contract workers to get the job done. With the big data crowdsourcing model, the provider can distribute their tasks among the workers who have online access across anywhere in the world. The tasks will be completed within the turnaround time with high quality and at lower cost.
Many of uses of crowdsourcing in healthcare today are supported by increasing global connectivity and require high levels of bandwidth and security. Clear instructions are also essential for success with crowdsourcing. Freelancers in medical transcription are usually beginners and this could tell on the quality of the transcripts. It would also be difficult to track each person’s work and retain good talent. On the other hand, these issues would not arise with medical transcription outsourcing to an experienced HIPAA-compliant medical transcription company. Better monitoring of the process and the rules of crowdsourcing are necessary to ensure better value for the healthcare industry.
To learn more about Crowdsourcing for Medical Transcription we have written a new blog “Crowdsourcing Helping to Diagnose Rare Medical Conditions Quickly” on August 7, 2017
