JAMA & ARCHIVES
Arch Fam Med
SEARCH
GO TO ADVANCED SEARCH
HOME  PAST ISSUES  TOPIC COLLECTIONS  CME  PHYSICIAN JOBS  CONTACT US  HELP
Institution: CLOCKSS  | My Account | E-mail Alerts | Access Rights | Sign In
  Vol. 7 No. 3, May 1998 TABLE OF CONTENTS
  Archives
 • Online Features
  Series on Practice Management
 This Article
 •Full text
 •PDF
 •Send to a friend
 • Save in My Folder
 •Save to citation manager
 •Permissions
 Citing Articles
 •Citing articles on HighWire
 •Citing articles on Web of Science (5)
 •Contact me when this article is cited
 Related Content
 •Similar articles in this journal
 Topic Collections
 •Medical Practice
 •Academic Medical Centers
 •Alert me on articles by topic

The Cost of Medical Dictation Transcription at an Academic Family Practice Center

Frank H. Lawler, MD, MSPH; Dewey C. Scheid, MD, MPH; Nancy J. Viviani, RN

Arch Fam Med. 1998;7:269-272.

Background  Very little is known about the volume or cost of medical transcription in primary care. A study of the number of lines and cost of transcription at an academic family practice center was performed to establish the average number of lines and costs of transcription by level of service and type of provider (faculty physician, physician assistant, resident physician, and others).

Methods  Parallel 4-month sets of computerized billing records and computerized transcription summary logs (listing the patient name and identification, the dictator, the number of lines of dictation, and the date for each dictation) were merged and analyzed to compare the cost and volume of dictation by types of service and types of provider.

Results  During the study period there were 11085 patient encounters, 9013 with transcription. The average cost of transcription per encounter using transcription was $3.96 and the median was $3.64. The cost per encounter ranged from $0.39 (3 lines of dictation) to $24.83 (191 lines of dictation). Faculty physicians and physician assistants had the lowest cost, resident physicians were intermediate in cost, and others (such as medical students) had the highest costs for medical transcription. Transcription costs rose with increasing level of service but became a smaller proportion of the collected fee, averaging only 5% for a level 5 encounter.

Conclusions  The cost of transcription as a part of overhead was higher than anticipated. Specific education regarding dictation form and content and ways to decrease these costs is appropriate.


From the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City.



THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

No Change in Physician Dictation Patterns When Visit Notes Are Made Available Online for Patients
Kind et al.
Mayo Clin Proc. 2011;86:397-405.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Impacts of Computerized Physician Documentation in a Teaching Hospital: Perceptions of Faculty and Resident Physicians
Embi et al.
J Am Med Inform Assoc 2004;11:300-309.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  




HOME | CURRENT ISSUE | PAST ISSUES | TOPIC COLLECTIONS | CME | PHYSICIAN JOBS | HELP
CONDITIONS OF USE | PRIVACY POLICY | CONTACT US | SITE MAP
 
© 1998 American Medical Association. All Rights Reserved.

DCSIMG