Like other industries, healthcare is experiencing the effects of the “Great Resignation.” A recent article in Forbes magazine reports an estimated healthcare workforce loss of 20%, and facilities are finding themselves struggling to fill staff shortages.
Some healthcare workers are moving on to other occupations. Others are simply retiring out of the workforce. That seems to be the case with many medical transcriptionists (MTs), but there are fewer people going into the profession to replace them. It’s one of the reasons facilities are outsourcing their medical transcription services to AQuity Solutions.
“The aging workforce is retiring and it’s tough, not just for our industry, but for so many industries to fill these positions,” said Jennifer Vandiver, Customer Care Manager at AQuity. “Medical transcriptionist retirees have all of this knowledge and are leaving such gaping holes.”
A Human Touch Makes the Difference
The U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics projects a 7% decline of employment in MTs from 2020 to 2030. However, they also project 6,600 openings each year for the next decade to replace those that left, and it’s an important position to fill. Incomplete or inaccurate information in medical records can keep patients from receiving the best care possible, and front-end speech recognition (SR) can only go so far.
Although helpful, SR needs to be reviewed and corrected. The time physicians spend doing this could be spent seeing other patients. That time can also overlap into personal lives when physicians find themselves documenting in the evening or on weekends, leading to physician burnout.
SR also lacks something that a human transcriber does have: logic. Medical terminology can be difficult enough, but when you dive into specialties, things become even more complicated. Take pathology, radiology, and oncology specialties for example.
“Speech recognition generally does not do well without someone sitting behind the computer reading, analyzing, and validating what is dictated against specialty standards,” said Denise Allen, Technology Adoption & User Experience Manager at AQuity. “It’s technically challenging and there are special formatting requirements for those specialties that do not translate well to SR. It requires a medical transcriptionist with the knowledge to set those reports up correctly so that a clinician can review and sign off without a lot of edits being made. AQuity has that skilled workforce.”
A Skilled Workforce at Your Fingertips
If you feel like you’re seeing more medical transcriptionists leave your facility than join, you’re not alone. Recruiting is tough, especially when you’re competing against other facilities for the same positions. Not to mention the resources and time that are required to attract the right candidates. That’s where AQuity excels.
Working with capacity planning, recruiting drives, and a global workforce, AQuity’s reach is far beyond that of a typical healthcare facility. Our exceptional quality, turn-around times, and the strength of our specialty teams for transcription services are why we’re top rated by KLAS and Black Book. Don’t continue to struggle with your medical transcriptionist shortage. The switch to AQuity makes filling the gap easy.
