schools for medical transcription – Medical Transcription Basics

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Is It a Good Idea to Go to School to Become a Medical Transcriptionist?

March 1, 2011 / Stephanie / Comments Off

A career in medical transcription is interesting to a lot of people, but there are a lot of reasons to be concerned about the career as well. The idea that you might be able to work at home is appealing to a lot of people. Concerns about electronic records and voice recognition software make it less appealing. Is going to school to become a medical transcriptionist a good idea? Is it still worth it?

You absolutely need to consider the future of medical transcription. It’s extremely relevant even when you’re training up for your first job. Good training will allow you to consider what’s happening within this industry.

It must first be noted, however, that there are still a lot of jobs out there for traditional medical transcriptionists. It has not vanished, and won’t for some time. Electronic medical records don’t automatically end the need, and not all doctors use voice recognition software. It takes time to make those changes.

Those won’t entirely do away with the need for medical transcriptionists anyhow, and if you have the right training you might just be able to take advantage of that. Places that don’t need medical transcriptionists because they’ve gone all electronic may still need help with their medical records, with transcriptionists working in an editing capacity. You’d be catching the errors the software makes in the record, and make no mistake, they will be there. Voice recognition is far from perfect.

Paying attention to where the industry is going is how you make your schooling worth it even if you don’t specifically take medical editor training. You may prefer to do the basic medical transcriptionist training to start, then add in medical editor training once you have some experience. A medical editor will still need to know how to do the work of a medical transcriptionist in order to do that work accurately. Such jobs will keep being out there for some time; the U.S. Department of Labor expects medical transcription jobs to grow by 11% by 2018. This could change as it’s only a forecast, but it is a good indication that the jobs aren’t going away too soon.

There is one more thing to consider when you’re wondering if going to school to become a medical transcriptionist is a good plan. That’s your own dedication to your training. It won’t be worthwhile if you aren’t a serious student. Taking classes isn’t a magic pass to a job. You have to gain the skills. You have to do hours and hours of practice transcription from real doctor dictation. You must learn the vocabulary. If all you want is to get through the classes fast, they might not be the best choice. You’re better off if you plan to take the time you need to learn all the skills.

Get free information from Career Step about their online medical transcriptionist training.

Which Online School Is Best for a Medical Transcriptionist Diploma?

February 23, 2011 / Stephanie / Comments Off

If you want to get into medical transcription, you’re going to need to get an education in it first. There’s a lot you have to know, and it’s a challenging career. You want to find the best online school to get your medical transcriptionist diploma.

There are several good choices available to future online medical transcription students. Once you know how to tell which are good, you can pick from them and decide which is the best for you.

The most important thing you get from an online school is not your medical transcriptionist diploma. It’s the skills to work as a medical transcriptionist. If you don’t really develop those skills well, the diploma is nothing more than a piece of paper.

Also important is the reputation of the online school with potential employers. It doesn’t matter how dedicated a student you were or how well you learned to transcribe medical records, if employers have had too many bad experiences hiring graduates of a particular school your odds of getting a job at that company goes way down. You want to go to a school that has the trust of many employers.

The program should teach you many of the basics first, such as medical terminology, anatomy, physiology and so forth. You can’t rely on a spell checker too much when you’re a medical transcriptionist, so all these things must be familiar, not just so that you spell them correctly, but so that you can hear the doctor say them and transcribe the report correctly. Many medical terms sound extremely similar to one another, and you must understand them well enough to catch the difference and to know if the doctor may have made a mistake in his dictation.

That’s only a part of what the school must teach you. They must also have you transcribe many hours of real doctor dictation for practice. This is where you learn how to put it all together into the medical record. You learn all about how to do this in the other parts of your training, but without a lot of practice you aren’t going to be prepared to do this in real life.

Cost has to be a factor for most of us. There aren’t many who can just pick a school with no thought to expense. There are very limited options for financial aid as a rule, since most programs don’t qualify for the usual financial aid programs.

You can just go with the most expensive school, but that’s not necessarily the best bet. Price isn’t everything. Make sure that if you go with an expensive school that the quality is worth the expense.

Don’t go for the cheapest either, although I would hope that would be obvious. It’s not cheap running a good online medical transcriptionist school. Too cheap means the school is probably lacking in some way.

Many schools will offer some sort of payment plan even if they don’t have other sorts of financial aid. There may also be benefits to paying the entire expense at once. Figure out what will work for you.

With some research into these factors you should be able to narrow down the field and pick the right online medical transcriptionist school for your needs. Once you’ve signed up, it’s up to you to make it through the classes and become a medical transcriptionist.

Get free information from Career Step about their online medical transcriptionist training.

How Long Do You Have to Go to College to Become a Medical Transcriptionist?

February 9, 2011 / Stephanie / Comments Off

You often hear that you have to go to college for two years to become a medical transcriptionist. Other schools claim they can train you in as little as eight weeks. How long do you really need to go to college to become a medical transcriptionist?

That depends.

It depends on a few factors. The first is which medical transcription program you sign up for. There are a lot of options out there. You don’t want to sign up for a program that promises you can graduate in less than four months – that’s too fast. Most people simply cannot acquire the skills needed to be a successful medical transcriptionist in less than four months. As a matter of fact, nine months is a reasonable estimate for many people in self paced training courses.

Community colleges and some other schools may have programs that take two years to finish. You don’t have to take that long. These programs may be offering an Associate’s degree in medical transcription, which is not necessary to find work. They may require you to take unrelated courses as well. That’s not a problem if that’s the way you want to go about training for this career, but it’s not as fast as more focused, self paced programs.

I like the self paced schools that give honest estimates of how long it takes most students to complete their programs. No false promises that you’ll know enough to find a job in just two months or that the average pay rate is higher than it is. You need honest information when you’re trying to start a new career, not hype and vague promises.

With a self paced program, a big part of what determines how long you have to go to college is you. If you work hard on your studies, you may be able to finish faster. But when you come to parts that are more challenging for you, you’re still able to take the time you need to really get the information down, no worries about holding the rest of the class up or needing to catch up with classmates who got it sooner. You can even take extra time if events in your life cause you to need to slow down for a bit.

As you look into various colleges that may train you to become a medical transcriptionist, consider what it is you want from the training. Quality is obviously a major factor, as is cost, but how long it takes to complete the course should be a factor too. Don’t go for promises of a lightning fast education, but also remember that you probably won’t need to study for two years to acquire the skills you need for this career. There’s a good balance that will help you to finish your training in a reasonable amount of time and be ready to work when you find a job.

Get free information from Career Step about their online medical transcriptionist training.

Is Schooling Necessary to Get a Job as a Medical Transcriptionist?

February 8, 2011 / Stephanie / Comments Off

Going through medical transcriptionist schooling may seem like an extra, expensive step to getting a job as a medical transcriptionist. Why do you need to spend thousands of dollars and several months learning the skills for this job? Isn’t it just typing up what the doctor says? How can that take special schooling?

It does indeed take special schooling for most people. The skills needed to become a successful medical transcriptionist aren’t as simple as they sound.

You aren’t just typing up what the doctor says, for example. Many doctors don’t dictate all that clearly, which means even just typing up what they say isn’t a particularly easy thing. You also have to understand what they’re saying and make sure it makes sense. Doctors are human, and they misspeak at times. They can name the wrong body part, wrong medication, wrong disorder… or just so mangle the pronunciation that you don’t know right away what they really said. Your schooling helps you to learn how to deal with these situations.

There are a lot of formatting rules for medical transcriptionists to follow as well. That’s not something you can always tell from what the doctor dictates. You have to know what the correct format is for the type of report being dictated.

Taking the time to get your schooling can even impact how much you earn as you work. It’s not just a matter of starting pay rate, it’s that many medical transcriptionists are paid on production. The better you know your work, the faster you can transcribe, and the more you can earn.

There are very few openings for untrained people wanting to get into medical transcription. It’s even challenging to get started when you do have training if you don’t pick a trusted school. Most openings state that you need at least two years of experience. If you want to get past that requirement, you need a solid education to show that you can do the work.

It’s also impractical for employers to train most people to do the work. It takes at least four months to learn this job, and 6-9 months is not at all uncommon. That’s a long time for an employer to let an employee sit in a training room.

There’s also too much risk to letting someone with insufficient medical knowledge do this work. Medical records are very sensitive. They must be transcribed accurately. If you can’t trust an employee to get the work done right, you’re not going to want to hire that employee. Why should an employer consider you if you don’t have some way to show them that you can do the work?

Get free information from Career Step about their online medical transcriptionist training.

Do You Need Schooling to Become an At Home Medical Transcriptionist?

February 8, 2011 / Stephanie / Comments Off

You want to become an at home medical transcriptionist. You’re confident you can pick up the needed skills on your own if they’d just give you the chance. Do you really need to pay for medical transcriptionist schooling and take all that time to learn it at school in order to work at home in medical transcription?

Yes, probably you do.

There are a few reasons for this. First of all, it’s not as simple as just typing what the doctor says. People who don’t know better may describe it that way, but few things in life are as basic as their simplest description.

You have to learn formatting. You have to know medical terminology. You have to know anatomy and physiology. You have to know the names of many medications and their generic variations. You have to develop your ear for transcription, and that’s not an easy thing to do. It only comes with practice.

Most of all, you must be fast and accurate. Medical transcription companies don’t want to spend significant amounts of time training you to do the work. They want you ready to go with just a little help getting used to the particular system they use. They don’t want you overloading their QA staff with poor quality work because you don’t really understand what you’re doing and can’t quite hear the difference between very similar terms used by the doctors.

Even though medical transcription schooling costs money, in the long run you may earn more if you go through it. Most at home medical transcriptionists are paid per line, not per hour. This means that the faster you can transcribe accurately, the more you earn. Taking the time to go through schooling means that you’ll be a faster transcriptionist at the start, and capable of earning more money.

If you feel you have most of the skills needed already, consider that many online medical transcriptionist schools are self paced. If you already know the information, you can go through that part of the course more quickly, and spend more time on the parts you still need to learn. You may be surprised during your training to find out what you don’t know already that you need to know to work in this industry.

I’ll admit that it’s not completely impossible to become a medical transcriptionist without training, but the odds of doing so successfully are pretty low. That’s not the usual way to get started, and particularly in low supervision areas such as at home medical transcription employers need to know their employees can do the work with minimal help and supervision. Having an education gives them reassurance that you know what you’re doing, which increases the chance that they will consider you at all for a job.

Get free information from Career Step about their online medical transcriptionist training.

Interested in Becoming a Medical Transcriptionist, But Not Sure Which School Is Best?

February 7, 2011 / Stephanie / Comments Off

Choosing the best medical transcription school is pretty challenging. They all try to look appealing. They’d like you as a student, after all. How can you choose the best school when you’re interested in becoming a medical transcriptionist, and be sure you’ve made the right choice?

Research is the key. It’s not terribly difficult, but it is vital. Otherwise you could find out you’ve paid for medical transcriptionist training through a school that really wasn’t worth the time or money. Most of us don’t have either to waste.

The school must provide you with an education good enough that you can work as a competent medical transcriptionist after graduation, assuming you study hard enough. You’re part of the equation too! It may sound difficult to figure out which schools offer good enough training that you’ll get the skills you need, but it’s not as hard as it may sound.

AHDI Approval is one factor to check. If the school is on their list, they’re probably a pretty good school. They’ve had their curriculum reviewed for quality by an association of medical transcriptionists.

Another factor to consider is how employers feel about graduates of that program. One of the biggest complaints newly trained medical transcriptionists have is that all employers seem to want at least two years of medical transcription experience before they’ll even consider hiring. A good school can train you well enough for certain employers to waive that requirement. Not all employers will, but some do. That’s your foot in the door for this career.

Cost matters too. This is why different people will come up with different answers for which is the best school. What’s best for you is not best for everyone.

Cost can be a big part of the decision. No one wants to spend more than they have to on their education, but it does cost some to get good enough training to get the job. That doesn’t mean the most expensive school is the best. You can go to a more midrange priced school and do well so long as they offer high quality training.

You can never forget that even the best program is only good if you make the most of it. You have to gain the skills they’re teaching you. If you aren’t a focused, determined student, you aren’t going to do so well in this career. Even when you find an employer willing to consider you without two years of experience because you attended a good school, you’ll have to prove your skills through a test. If you didn’t really learn the skills during your training, you won’t make it.

Get free information from Career Step about their online medical transcriptionist training.

What Is the Best Online Medical Transcriptionist School?

February 3, 2011 / Stephanie / Comments Off

If you’re going to pay for the training you need to become a medical transcriptionist, you probably want the best training you can get. How will you know when you’ve found the best online medical transcriptionist school?

You just have to know what you’re looking for and what makes a great medical transcriptionist school.

It’s not just the price, of course. A higher price does not guarantee a better education. Good schools will usually cost more than bad schools, but that’s not a guarantee. Schools can set their fees to whatever they think they can get for their training, after all.

AHDI Approval is one good indicator that you’ve found one of the best online medical transcriptionist schools available. They only approve a relatively small number of schools, and only after they meet strict criteria in terms of training, finances and more.

Cost is a factor in terms of what you can afford. If you’re trying to decide between two schools, sometimes it comes down to the one you can better afford to attend. You can’t go cheap, but if all else appears equal, you may not need to go with the most expensive either.

Some things you’ll find to be true of most programs. You’ll often see that online schools allow you to learn medical transcription at your own pace. This is great if you need to work another job while you train or if you have small children or other family members to care for. You can do your training when your other obligations allow. You’ll then also be learning how to manage those obligations once you complete your training and find a job.

Quality programs also have teachers available to you by email, chat or phone. Most students don’t just learn on their own. It’s important to be able to ask for help when you need it. Having a qualified teacher available to you is vital to your long term success.

You also want to know that employers trust the school and will hire their graduates. Otherwise, you’re going to have quite a time getting past the standard requirement of two to three years experience in medical transcription that you see in most job ads. Finding a job with training but no on the job experience is a bear no matter what industry you’re talking about. If the training you’ve gone through is sufficiently trusted by employers, you’ve just minimized the experience issue.

Schools often but not always have job placement assistance. It may be as simple as job boards available to new graduates. You want your school to give you some sort of resources for landing that first job. You can’t always rely on the big employers having a need for new employers. You need to know how to find other employers so that you can apply for as many positions as it takes until you find a job.

Get free information from Career Step about their online medical transcriptionist training.

Are All Online Classes for Medical Transcription Created Equal?

January 26, 2011 / Stephanie / Comments Off

There are a lot of online classes for medical transcription out there. They all say they’ll give you the training you need to become a successful medical transcriptionist if you sign up for them. But should you sign up with just any of them?

Of course not. There are always differences, and you should make sure you’re getting the best deal you can. That includes being certain that the classes are worth signing up for in the first place. I define that as classes that will really prepare you for your first job in medical transcription.

One way to tell if an online class will do that for you is to check with the AHDI. They review courses and give approval to the ones that meet their criteria. These are courses which will teach you much of what it takes to transcribe successfully. Work hard in your studies, and you improve your chances of graduating well enough to land a job after.

You also want to consider if the courses are preparing you for the future. Medical transcription has gone through some changes in recent years, and will continue to do so. Electronic medical records are changing the job significantly. The better prepared you are for dealing with these changes, the better off you will be in the long run.

Don’t sign up for online classes, or classes anywhere, that promise you too much. No excessively quick training. No promises of higher pay than what can really be expected.

You should expect them to offer significant support during your training. There should be ways to contact a teacher quickly. Forums to chat with other students are handy also. Job placement assistance is great as well, for after graduation.

Some will claim you can do it almost entirely on your own. Online classes do mean you’ll be doing a lot of work at your own pace, but most students need some support. Medical transcription is a highly challenging industry, one that demands accuracy. You don’t want to be adequate. You want to be great. Having the right support in your online classes will help you become a great transcriptionist.

Take some time to learn about the online classes you’re considering to learn medical transcription. Make sure they’re a good choice for your budget, schedule and career. Think about the long term to be sure you get a good one. You don’t want to find out after graduation that you wasted time and money on a class that didn’t teach you enough.

Get free information from Career Step about their online medical transcriptionist training.

Are Schools for Medical Transcription Honest About Your Chances of Working in Medical Transcription?

January 11, 2011 / Stephanie / Comments Off

You know that when you look at schools for medical transcription that they’re trying to sell you a service, that is, an education that will allow you to break into a new career. But are they honest about your chances of working in medical transcription and what the salary is like?

Some are, some aren’t.

If they’re being honest, the schools for medical transcription are probably using the data from the U.S. Department of Labor, which quotes job growth of 11% by 2018 for medical transcription. Ideally, they’ll link to that information as well on the Department of Labor’s website, so you can see it from the source yourself. That’s being honest.

Some schools will talk about how medical transcriptionists can earn up to $50,000 a year or so. It’s true enough that some medical transcriptionists earn that or even more, but most don’t. From that same Department of Labor report, the middle 50% of medical transcriptionists earn between $13.02 and $18.55 an hour. That comes out to under $40,000 a year even on that high side. Only the highest 10% earn more than 21.81 an hour.

In other words, don’t plan on a high income, especially right after graduation. You can hit the midrange if you really work at it and get a good job, but don’t be surprised to start on the lower side.

A part of this is due to how medical transcription salaries work. They aren’t usually based on hourly work, particularly for home based transcriptionists. Pay is often based on production.

That’s great once you get going. You can improve your pay rate by learning to work faster.

But most important right at the start are your chances of getting hired with training but no actual work experience. That’s the tough part, and no easily accessible outside statistics will tell you how good a chance you have of that. You have to look at the school itself and what it says.

Job placement rate is one factor to consider. If they’re placing a high percentage of graduates, you have a better chance of working in medical transcription after graduation. However, schools may count finding any work, whether it’s as a medical transcriptionist or not, as an employed graduate.

Better is to look at the trust medical transcription employers put in graduates of that program. What do they think? Will they hire new graduates who haven’t worked in the industry yet if they have done well at that school for medical transcription?

That’s what tells you a school may be worth attending when you want to become a medical transcriptionist. It’s a good hint that the program teaches you well enough to get a job if employers trust that school.

Get free information from Career Step about their online medical transcriptionist training.

Which Schools for Medical Transcriptionist Training Are Most Likely to Get You a Job After Graduation?

January 10, 2011 / Stephanie / Comments Off

When you’re looking at schools for medical transcriptionist training, it’s about more than getting an education. It’s about building the skills that will allow you to get a job after graduation. Medical transcription isn’t a skill people pick up as a hobby, after all.

Getting a job after graduation is all about your skills. You need training that is good enough to get you past that pesky two years of experience requirement most medical transcriptionist jobs have. That means the schools need to be good enough to gain the trust of potential employers. They need to consistently produce graduates who are ready to work.

Look for schools that can show employers trust them. They should be able to show that many medical transcription companies hire their graduates. There may even be a program in place for graduates from trusted schools to bypass the experience requirement and simply be tested for jobs when they’re available.

You do not want a school that offers you training that takes too little time. Medical transcriptionist training isn’t about getting through quickly, not if you want to work later. It’s about building the skills you will need. If you don’t build the skills and somehow get a job anyhow, you’ll quickly find that your lack of skills effects your income. Most at home medical transcriptionists are paid on production. Your skills really matter to your income.

That’s the big reason you need a good quality school to train you. It’s not just the ability to get the job. It’s the ability to earn a good income. The more skilled you are, the better you know your work, the more productive you can be, and the more you’ll probably earn each day you transcribe.

A school that is AHDI Approved is a good choice also. Schools that without that approval will still say they’re a good program, but how can you tell? AHDI is a good third party that checks the quality of programs to see if they’re giving medical transcriptionist training that should actually produce someone capable of working in this industry.

Never think that the school is solely responsible for the quality of your education. You’re even more responsible. If you aren’t making the effort in your studies, you aren’t going to get the benefit from even the best of schools.

That said, there are plenty of resources you should expect a good school for medical transcriptionists. They should have student forums, so you can talk things over with your fellow students. They should have highly accessible teachers, ideally by both phone and email.

What happens after you graduate a medical transcriptionist training program is up to you as well as the program you attended. Work hard through a good quality program, and you increase your odds that you will get a job after you graduate.

Get free information from Career Step about their online medical transcriptionist training.

Medical Transcription Basics

Medical transcription training and schooling tips

Tag: schools for medical transcription

Is It a Good Idea to Go to School to Become a Medical Transcriptionist?

Which Online School Is Best for a Medical Transcriptionist Diploma?

How Long Do You Have to Go to College to Become a Medical Transcriptionist?

Is Schooling Necessary to Get a Job as a Medical Transcriptionist?

Do You Need Schooling to Become an At Home Medical Transcriptionist?

Interested in Becoming a Medical Transcriptionist, But Not Sure Which School Is Best?

What Is the Best Online Medical Transcriptionist School?

Are All Online Classes for Medical Transcription Created Equal?

Are Schools for Medical Transcription Honest About Your Chances of Working in Medical Transcription?

Which Schools for Medical Transcriptionist Training Are Most Likely to Get You a Job After Graduation?

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