Making sense of transcription pricing and billing

Understanding medical transcription pricing and billing can be a confusing task. It shouldn't be this way, but without an industry pricing standard — medical transcription service providers (MTSOs) utilize many different billing options. Each method seems to have its own character and count definition — and a different price point. The inconsistencies have led to billing confusion and have made it very challenging for healthcare facilities to clearly define the true cost of outsourced transcription. MedScribe's goal is to provide our clients with a simple, verifiable pricing and billing standard. To achieve this goal, we encourage the use of the method known as Visible Black Character (VBC). To learn more about the industry's pricing standards.

Industry standards for character pricing (visible black character) The billable unit being measured and how that measurement is being recorded is required information to properly evaluate the pricing of transcription services. Until recently, the majority of the largest providers have utilized one of two methods: AAMT Lines or Net Lines (ASCII). Billable Units At the core of transcription billing is the billable unit. This unit is a measurement agreed upon between the client and the provider. Some of the more common units are listed below: Net (ASCII) Character: Any character - printed or visible - that's part of the final transcribed document (see sample to left). This includes the space between words or sentences. Hidden formatting instruc¬tions (i.e., bolding, spellchecking, etc.) or additional keystrokes are not in¬cluded in the total character count. AAMT Character: Any letter, number, symbol and/or formatting code used to maintain and reproduce a transcribed document. This includes spaces, carriage return strokes, underlining, characters in headers and footers, and characters produced by or contained in macros. Gross Line:Any number of characters taking up one line of type; regardless of the text font or line length.

Gross Page: A page of text formatted as it would be if printed on a printer. Recorded Minute: 60 seconds as reported by a dictation sys¬tem or (when using digital handheld recorders) the jobs file information. Visible Black Character: Any character (excluding spaces) — viewable by the naked eye — on the final transcribed document; regardless of whether viewed electronically or on a printed page. As seen below, when using VBC pricing, HIM Departments are charged for 33% less characters than AAMT Line and 17% less than ASCII. That difference can be very meaningful when multiplied by the number of reports transcribed for your facility. This example emphasizes that the counting method to be used must be taken into consideration when comparing the prices of different transcription solutions.