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.  

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Some Efficiency Tips So You Could Earn More in Transcription

Medical transcription is one of the fastest growing career fields not just in the U.S. but all over the world.  It’s one of the most common portably career for housewives and former employees of medical institutions, mainly because it allows people to work at their convenience and in the comfort of their own home. 

So you just got your medical transcriptionist certificate and are still probably getting the hang of your job. Worry not, because you can always get better at your job sooner than you think. Here are a few tips on how you could speed up things a bit:

1. Know your vocabulary. Your training includes over 40 hours of studying pharmaceutical, surgical, gynecology and other groups of medical terms. Learn them by heard—have them for breakfast, snacks and dinner and you’ll get to memorize them eventually. Better yet—do not just memorize them but understand how the terms are being used in context.

2. Know the keyboard shortcuts. Practice using your PC’s keyboard (Microsoft) shortcuts as early as now to help you save time in opening applications, switching between tabs, or typing and editing your documents. Or you can assign your own shortcuts to your keyboard. (It’s all about you, baby!

3. Optimize your system. Make sure you’re Operating System or your apps are in good condition, meaning, are free of bugs or do not lag. You can also install a PC optimizer that keeps your PC error free. CNET.com has an extensive library of applications that can help improve your PC’s performance so that it won’t interrupt your work and enhance your productivity. Make sure your PC is also free from Malware or any viruses.

4. Take a break. Try productivity techniques like the Pomodoro, which will have you taking breaks with increasing duration every 20 to 30 minutes. Or just take a break when possible. According to an article published on the New York Times, taking a short walk, stretching, or just a few minutes of daydreaming can help you recharge your creativity and mental faculties. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has a very informative page about taking breaks—you should check it out.

Working faster and better is no rocket science: All you need are the right kind of resources to do the job.

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Distinguishing a Leader from a Manager

Leading people is hard, so managing people is probably the least all newly promoted employee/supervisors can do. It’s a given for any leader to start managing employees first: making sure everyone’s crossing out things on their to-do list, hitting their goals, and taking their breaks at the right time. Crossing that bridge, however, is something that not a lot of managers can do.

However, by dissecting what the real experts have to say about leadership and management, maybe we can learn a thing or two about what really makes a leader and draw the line between leaders and managers. Utilizing research from the Economic Times and the Wall Street Journal, we list the qualities that define a leader and a manager according to three leading management consultants in the country:

A manager is all about keeping tabs on employees. Management consultant and author Peter Drucker once wrote that the job of managers “is to maintain control over people by helping them develop their own assets.” It’s a pretty deodorized statement if you ask us, but its implications are clear: being a manager is all about control. Managers had to stick to the plan and the status quo. They are also more about executing upper management’s orders and plans and keep the whole team’s goal aligned with the company goal. 

A leader has the courage to stand up to management. UniversityNow founder and CEO Gene Wade says a leader focuses more on what the tasks are and why they should be done, while the manager is more focused on how the task will be accomplished and when it will be done. Wade says that to get the answers to “what and “why,” the person in charge should be able to determine the root causes of these things, which sometimes involve questioning the decisions of superiors.  "This means that they're able to stand up to upper management when they think something else needs to be done for the company," Wade told the Economic Times.

A leader inspires growth and all the good things in his or her employees; a manager focuses on the system. Warren Bennis wrote in his 1989 book “On Becoming a Leader” that a leader innovates, while a manager administers existing rules. He also said that a leader maintains (again, it’s all about having control), while the leader develops each and every one’s potential. The manager focuses on impacting the bottom line, while the leader is open to changes and possibilities.

Sources:
http://www.businessinsider.com/3-things-that-separate-leaders-from-managers-2012-9
http://www.meditec.com/blog/
http://guides.wsj.com/management/developing-a-leadership-style/what-is-the-difference-between-management-and-leadership/http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-04-13/news/38511352_1_leader-manager-gene-wade

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