Do you think medical transcription industry is dying?

Having monitored the Bureau of Labor Statistics website for quite some time, we’re excited to see some rosy updates on the job outlook for medical transcriptionists. According to recent BLS data, job outlook for the industry is now as fast as the average for all industries at 8 percent (back then it was “slower than average”). 2012 data also shows that 84,100 jobs have been added to the industry so far. Also, the salary is now averaging $16.36 (as far as I remember, it was around $11 or $13 in 2010). 

As medical transcription advocates, the Meditec team strongly believes that Medical transcription will be a growing industry, considering that the demand for healthcare services remains on an upward trend. We can expect more of our local hospitals and clinics to become busier as the baby boomer population ages. However, with stricter controls on protecting and sharing patient information being enforced through HIPAA, some insiders were saying that this will somehow affect the amount of work medical transcriptionists will handle. And as we all know, a huge chunk of medical transcription work here in the U.S. are being outsourced to India, and Southeast Asian countries.

What about you? Have you been affected by the HIPAA? Is the market becoming more competitive for you or did you have a hard time finding medical transcription jobs in the past months or year? Do you find yourself and your colleagues a dying breed? Hope we can take a minute of your time to answer our poll this week.