How to Start a Medical Transcription Business

Summary: One of the biggest problems while starting a home medical transcription business is how to set up your home computer and source your clients. In this really great article, I’ve got a neat set of tips on how you can set up your business with a good client base in few weeks of time!

Go ahead and read on for the latest in “how to start a medical transcription business”.

How to start a medical transcription business!

• First you’ve to do a good medical transcription course. Medical transcription is basically transcribing doctor’s patient accounts into a written file for purpose of making a permanent record online. You should know how to understand what doctors are talking about, spellings, grammar and how to transcribe files in to a format that is easily understood by anyone who refers to them.
• Once you’ve done your course, it’s a good idea to get a little experience while working with reputable medical transcription companies. Work at least for a year at professional companies; this will help you to increase your typing speed and at the same time teach you the insider tips and tricks which your course could not cover. It will also help you make the necessary contacts to pick up private clients in the future.
• Register with the professional organization in your country. Most people from medical transcription business do not need to register anywhere but doing this will keep you informed on the advances in the field.
• You will need to source all the equipment for your medical transcription business like computer, foot pedal, headphones, a fast and secure internet connection, software to deal with the audio downloads, transcription software and software to upload Word files to your clients computer. You might also need a fax line, a fax machine, scanners and printers to have as backups just in case!
• Invest in backup software to help you in being as accurate in your transcription as possible. Software which is absolutely necessary is an English dictionary, a grammar and transcription style guide, a complete dictionary of medical terms, a drug index, a laboratory and pathology word book, specialty word books for separate medical fields, a medical acronym word book, and several other medical specialty books. You will get quite a few of these books online if you sort through sites which offer free downloads of e-books. Buying the software will be a really big investment so search to see whether you can get them free or share the cost with another medical transcriptionist.
• Software you should get is a Medical spellchecker as well as an abbreviation system such as PRD or Smartype. The ordinary spellchecker which comes with Word is just not enough to deal with medical terms.
• Your initial investment can be about $6000 to about $7000 if you get everything brand new. But is a much better idea to source what you need from Ebay where you get lots of stuff for a much better rate. It will also get your initial investment down to a minimum.
• Finding clients can be a little tricky. But you have to work at it. Register with several freelancer sites and put up samples of your work at sites like Getafreelancer, Elance and Ifreelance. If you can afford it set up a website too where you can advertise your work and your accuracy levels. Do put up references where your potential clients can check out your work. In the beginning don’t get upset if you don’t really get a competitive rate; that’s just the way it is. But once you’ve established yourself you can ask rates per page or per hour. It’s just a matter of experience.