How will Health Care Reform affect Medical Transcription?

Health Care Reform passed on March 21, 2010.  President Barack Obama signed it into law on Monday Night, March 23, 2010. 

A lot of people may be wondering how this new bill will affect the medical transcription career field.

Before this bill was passed there were over 30 million people in the United States without health insurance.  This means that a lot of these people did not go to see the doctor until an emergency would arise.  Then they would go into the emergency rooms.  This resulted in packed emergency rooms and medical reports being transcribed for just the one visit. There were also people with existing health conditions that could not get health insurance.  This is all about to change.  Insurance companies will not be allowed to deny a person just because they have a current or past health condition. 

Now that the Health Care Reform bill has passed every person in the United States will be required to have health insurance. This will mean that over 30 million people will have to get health insurance and a large percentage of these people will go see doctors for anything from a minor sore throat to major health issues. Others that could not get health insurance will now be able to get the health insurance they desperately need.

This will result in more patients for doctors and larger patient files.  The doctors will have more medical reports that will need to be transcribed.  There is already a huge shortage in the United States for the qualified Medical Transcriptionist.  This will only increase as the patient number increases.

Some of the changes will be right away and other changes will take months to several years to take effect.

What does this mean for you?

More job opportunities will open up for the medical transcriptionist!  If you are already an MT you can look forward to the many job opportunities that will open up in the future.  For those that are not MTs and are considering the medical transcription career field, this is the perfect time to get the proper training.  Once you have completed your medical transcription training you will want to consider becoming credentialed. 

You can take the RMT (Registered Medical Transcription) exam through AHDI after completing your medical transcription course.  Getting credentialed will show doctors that you are serious about your career.  After working as an MT or RMT for 2 years you can take your career further by getting credentialed as a CMT (Certified Medical Transcriptionist).

While there is a lot of controversy about the Health Care Reform Bill, the one thing that we are very excited about is the possibilities that the new Health Care Reform Bill will open up for the Medical Transcription Career.

Even doctors that use SRT (Speech Recognition Technology) Software will need the 2^nd set of eyes that the medical transcriptionist can give.  The MTs that listen to the dictations and review /edit the reports created by the SRT systems will be commonly known as medical transcription editors.

As you can see there are many new doors that can open for you with the evolving change in technology along with the new health care laws.

One other thing that is very important for current and future MTs is to keep current with the HIPAA laws!  Make sure that your computer is secure and that you use it for your medical transcription business only.   When sending files make sure they are secure.  Never share patient information with anyone!

For more information about the medical transcription career or becoming a medical transcriptionist please see our website at: www.mtathome.com