Are you thinking of starting medical transcriptions at home and looking for some great online medical transcription jobs? You are on the right page because, in this blog, you will learn what it requires to become a medical transcriptionist and the companies that hire home-based professionals.
Before you move forward, you must know whether the job suits you and whether you’re willing to develop the skills required for it. Medical transcription is not a secure job profile, as it requires excellent listening and interpreting skills, good command over the English language, fast and correct typing, and basic knowledge of medical terms.
Although you need not possess a science or an MBBS degree to get into work from home medical transcription jobs, you must be familiar with medical reporting, anatomy, physiology, and medical jargon.
In the medical transcription industry, you can find a job in three categories, namely medical transcriptionists, medical transcription editors, and dictators. Although the general job description is similar for each of these online medical transcription jobs, the duties will slightly differ.
Medical Transcription Jobs From Home Overview
Medical transcriptionists listen to the audio files or voice recordings of medical practitioners, nurses, diagnostic center professionals, and other health care providers and type them out into word documents that go into the patient’s medical record.
Other doctors use these files to analyzing patients’ condition and history and determine the right treatment plan. The audio files could be of different types, such as prescriptions, patient’s health progress after a critical surgery, a surgery process, and other dictations of doctors.
As a work-from-home professional, these audio files shall be shared to you by insurance companies, hospitals, or medical professionals via emails. While pursuing medical transcription at home, you may also be required to review and correct transcripts that were created by speech recognition software.
The medical transcriptions world has revolved from manual transcribing to software-generated manuscripts.
However, since the healthcare industry cannot trust software programs for accuracy and perfection, They hire freelancers at a high-rate to fulfill online medical transcription job openings and edit multiple audio files.
[Also Read: Guide to Become a Medical Transcriptionist]
Salaries for Medical Transcription Jobs at Home
Various factors contribute to the wages of medical transcribers, including experience, certification, and performance & quality.
In 2018, the average salary a home-based medical transcriptionist earned(1) was $16.72 per hour and $34,770 per annum.
However, most companies and medical firms hire only experienced transcriptionists. So, if you are a beginner, be prepared to expect a lower-salary. On the other hand, you can boost your career by earning a certification or improving your performance and speed.
Since medical transcriptionists are paid based on performance (number of documents completed in an hour), you can increase your rate per hour once your speed and accuracy increase.
Please note that the rise of digital documentation has seen a small decline (-3% between 2016 and now) in the requirement of medical transcriptionists and editors. However, this shouldn’t concern you because there are alternative careers that could be pursued from homes, such as medical coding and billing and general transcription jobs.
Where Can You Look for Medical Transcription Job Openings
Several companies offer medical transcriptionist jobs from home. However, the salary and job descriptions vary by industry. You can find job openings in hospitals, doctors’ clinics, insurance companies, medical-based legal firms, and other business support companies.
Here’s a list of 8 companies that recruit freelancers and home-based medical transcriptionists:
- Ascend Healthcare Systems (offer clinical documenting and medical transcription jobs)
- iMedX (Candidates must clear a test to get into medical transcription)
- Acusis (provides full-time and part-time employment)
- Eight Crossings Inc (You will find several home-based job opportunities in the pharmaceutical industry, apart from transcription)
- M*Modal (You need a year’s experience to work for this firm)
- FastChart (Go through their qualification form before applying for a job)
- nThrive (You need to have a strong background in medical terminology, minimum 3 years’ experience, and flexibility in work-timings)
- Transperfect (They have both internal positions as well as freelancing offers)
Do You Need Special Training?
Yes.
There is no place for mistakes in medicine. So, whether you choose to be a doctor, a nurse, a nutritionist, or a medical transcriptionist, you must gain knowledge and obtain required certifications.
Even as an entry-level candidate, you need to be certified. The good news is that many reputed institutions offer online medication transcriptionist certification courses.
The course duration can range between 4 months and 12 months, depending upon the type of certification. There are two types: registered medical transcriptionist (RMT) and certified medical transcriptionist (CMT).
Both the certifications offer training in physiology, anatomy, medical terminology, legal terms, English grammar, and content development, followed by an initial certification test, and then scheduled retesting for renewing the certification.
If you have a two-year associate degree program in a related subject, you can find entry-level jobs in medical transcription without certification.
Skills and Equipment Required for Online Medical Transcription Jobs
As discussed earlier, you will need excellent listening skills, excellent written communication in the English language, and accurate and fast typing (at least 60 words per minute). Someone’s life is going to depend upon the information you type. So, you have to have excellent interpretation skills too.
You may also need a good computer with reliable performance (at least 3 GB RAM and good battery backup), a high-speed internet connection (most preferably WiFi), best quality headphones with noise cancellation features, and excellent audio file playback software, transcription software and foot pedal. The hiring company will most probably provide the transcription software.
If the medicine realm thrills you, and if you want to find a job that doesn’t require you to study and practice medicine, you can pursue this career and earn a good income. Connect with other medical transcriptionists to improve your scope of finding more jobs.
