The fact remains far from the dreams sold. As in any other field, in medical transcription too, things transformed with the evolution of technology. At the initial stage, advancement in technology eliminated typewriters and tape recorders at the homeland itself. Later it eliminated the need to confine to offices/hospitals and allowed to move work across borders. The same evolution of technology started eliminating the need to type. With the advent of voice recognition softwares, the role of a transcriptionist changed from typing to editing the vomitus of voice recognition softwares. Though voice recognition softwares purportedly reduce workload, it is the other way round, forcing transcriptionists to work more, having to edit more number of lines to attain the prescribed workloads. Moreover, there is absolutely no career growth potential howsoever hard you work. Since the records pertain to healthcare, there is no room for error too. Furthermore, along with competition from countries like Philippines, the pay rates got deteriorated over time. Skyrocketing inflation and living costs further made a big dent on the bread at hand.
Many medical transcription companies closed shop or got converted themselves to medical transcription training centers or canvasing agents for the survived production centers. Being unable to survive the work pressure, limited scope, and less
attractive pay, many MTs too dropped midway. Those who are still
staying back are left with no other choice of changing career and are
doing all that they could do to not let the paychecks shrink though
beefing up their take-home pay is more a distant dream. They are
counting their pay in meager paisas per line that even an uneducated
physical labor working elsewhere for the same amount of hours is taking
home a better pay than them. Hence there are medical transcription jobs
available, but you don’t have candidates to fill those vacancies.With the compulsion of migrating to structured data by 2014 and the advent of point and click applications like EMR operated by the physicians itself, the evolution is now reaching a phase of totally eliminating the role of a transcriptionist, leave apart any future legislation prohibiting offshore outsourcing of healthcare documentation jobs. May be the chances of surviving in this career is possible by transforming to something like a virtual assistant to a physician in due course and having the adaptability to weather all the future possible changes.
CONCLUSION: With so much of uncertainties in the future and with no guarantee of remaining in the same trade five years down the lane and with a variety of other lucrative career options available, medical transcription is definitely not an attractive career choice in India at the turn of this decade (same is the case in the US too). May be it fits to be a part-time choice for homemakers who have no other option left but definitely not a full-time career choice for a youngster to start with.
