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When a Mumbai-based medical transcription company conducted tests
of hundreds of students from Gujarat who had got trained under a
special programme started by the State Government, the accuracy
level was found to be a shocking 20 percent.
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There are only 6 CMTs (Certified Medical Transcri-ptionists) in
India authorised by the American Association of Medical Transcri-ptionists
the body giving valid international certifications. The industry
employs more than 6,000 people presently.
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There are many institutes in India conducting medical transcription
courses, but not even one among the lot is a recognised training
centre.
It
was essentially the lure of high profitability that led to the mushrooming
of medical transcription (MT) units in the country two years ago.
Today inefficient manpower resou-rces have forced the closure of
most and in the process, consolidated the market for big time players,
who have managed to not just survive but successfully thrive through
the trying times. No longer a domain of small time owners and fly-by-night
operators, quality training and international certifications, if
available in the country could well put India ahead of Phillippines
and China, the main providers in the Asia Pacific region. Nasscom
predicts that the industry has the potential to earn an annual revenue
of Rs 4,000 crore by 2008 employing more than 50,000 people.
For
a business where the level of accuracy determines the payment, it
competes on quality not price. The clincher being the fact that
good transcriptionists are much more difficult to come by than the
general staff required for other IT enabled services. They are the
greatest assets of the company, the driving force and revenue generators.
The need to design a standardised curriculum, suited to the requirements
of the industry has long been felt. Following the closure of many
MT units, the industry seems to have woken up to the fact that it
needs to train and treat its people resources well to survive.
“Based
on our industry experience we have devised a curriculum to train
transcriptionists to understand the accent and develop skills. One
of the major problems is that there is no live work and the students
are made to practice on dummy files. More practice needs to be done
on live files to fine-tune the skills of understanding medical terminologies
with live output,” says Kirit Kanakiya, managing director,
BSEL Information Systems. One of the major players, the company
subcontracts its projects to smaller units in India. It’s US
subsidiary has in fact recently taken over two medical transcription
centres there. Reminding that proper distribution of software is
essential, ensuring that an individual is given the voice data of
the same doctor everyday, he says that most companies in India is
that they do not invest in monitoring software. “We have developed
an effective software which we give to our vendors,” claims
Kanakiya, adding that this is necessary to create a knowledge base.
It
was primarily the lack of efficient trained personnel that made
Kanakiya contemplate outsourcing to Phillippines a recently acquired
big order worth $3,00,000, when an Indian company agreed to provide
the accuracy level. “This project will give employment to a
thousand people,” says the man with obvious pride, pointing
out that there is no dearth of these kinds of projects if the accuracy
levels are guaranteed after passing through the quality analysis
tests. The stringent requirement of medical transcription makes
it different from the call centre industry the results in this case
are immediate. The TAT (turn around time) of 8 hours is another
essential factor for getting payments. Heavy deductions and penalties
are imposed if the accuracy and time factor clauses are not met.
“It
is more difficult to train people who have studied in the vernacular
stream than those from English medium background. It is essentially
a matter of grammar,” says Sukrut Shah, director, Namrata Infotech,
a medical transcription training company in Mumbai. Shah believes
that students from metro cities, fare much better than those from
smaller towns. At the Godrej Remote Services medical transcription
centre in the city only fresh graduates are recruited after they
clear the entrance exam. “We teach them from the very basics
so that they are able to get an idea what medical transcription
is all about,” informs accounts officer Kalpesh. In this case
also a good command over English is an essential requirement along
with background knowledge of computers.
The
truth remains that extensive training of not less than six to eight
months is needed not just on medical terminologies and language
rules, but a better adaptability to the doctor’s language,
understanding accents and diction styles. The ability to recognise
and interpret inaccuracies and verifying patient report for accuracy
is also needed. Experts demand that MT training institutes should
be set up in the country in collaboration with renowned training
centres in the US.
While
the industry has been seeking support from Nasscom and various state
governments, the initiatives need to be well planned to prevent
debacles, like a recent programme initiated by the Gujarat Government.
Under this programme the State Government paid Rs 19,500 course
as fee per student to MT training centres. The students had to pay
the remaining Rs 500. Overnight hundreds of centres sprung up in
the state, there were 68 in a town like Rajkot. Although thousands
of students were trained, they could not meet the industry standards.
The training centres also vanished as suddenly as they had appeared.
The result? Despite lakhs being spent no real contribution was made
to the industry. Foibles like these could well be avoided and more
efforts made to introduce certification courses and international
standard training probably the only needs of the hour, to make the
industry the predicted fourth largest foreign exchange earner for
the country.
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