Medical Transcription - Is it a good opportunity?

Is medical transcription still a good income opportunity? The statistics below indicate that there are plenty of opportunities for medical transcriptionists.

According to the BLS, "Demand for medical transcription services will be spurred by a growing and aging population.... Growing numbers of medical transcriptionists will be needed to amend patients’ records, edit for grammar, and identify discrepancies in medical records."

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountablility Act (HIPAA) has increased the need for more accurate record keeping or else stiff fines may be imposed. Medical Transcriptionists are needed to help health care providers comply with HIPAA.

Here's some more quotes from the U.S. Department of Labor:

• Job opportunities will be good.
  
• Many medical transcriptionists telecommute from home-based offices as employees or subcontractors for hospitals and transcription services or as self-employed, independent contractors.
  
• Employment of medical transcriptionists is projected to grow faster than average for all occupations through 2014.
  
• Demand for medical transcription services will be spurred by a growing and aging population. Older age groups receive proportionately greater numbers of medical tests, treatments, and procedures that require documentation.
  
• A high level of demand for transcription services also will be sustained by the continued need for electronic documentation that can easily be shared among providers, third-party payers, regulators, consumers, and health information systems.
  
• Growing numbers of medical transcriptionists will be needed to amend patients’ records, edit documents from speech recognition systems, and identify discrepancies in medical reports.
  
• Contracting out transcription work overseas and advancements in speech recognition technology are not expected to significantly reduce the need for well-trained medical transcriptionists. Outsourcing transcription work abroad—to countries such as India, Pakistan, Philippines, and the Caribbean—has grown more popular as transmitting confidential health information over the Internet has become more secure; however, the demand for overseas transcription services is expected only to supplement the demand for well-trained domestic medical transcriptionists.
  
• In addition, reports transcribed by overseas medical transcription services usually require editing for accuracy by domestic medical transcriptionists before they meet domestic quality standards. Speech-recognition technology allows physicians and other health professionals to dictate medical reports to a computer that immediately creates an electronic document. In spite of the advances in this technology, the software has been slow to grasp and analyze the human voice and the English language, and the medical vernacular with all its diversity.
  
• As a result, there will continue to be a need for skilled medical transcriptionists to identify and appropriately edit the inevitable errors created by speech recognition systems, and to create a final document.

Hospitals will continue to employ a large percentage of medical transcriptionists.

Above are direct quotes from the web site of the U.S. Department of Labor, http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos271.htm#outlook

Rest assured. There are still plenty of opportunities for people who want to work at home as a medical transcription.