Medical Transcriptionist Salary

3 Factors To Boost Your Medical Transcriptionist Salary

Did you know that between 2008 to 2018, the employment of medical transcriptionists is expected to rise by 11 percent? Are you willing to be part of this growing pool and dictate your own medical transcriptionist salary in the future?

If you have the aptitude for listening to medical recordings, transcribing and converting them to reports for inclusion in patient medical records, you may want to consider working as a certified medical transcriptionist. A necessary component of the health care system today is to keep an accurate record of every consultation and procedure undergone by a patient whether at a doctor's office or at a medical facility.

The information contained in these transcriptions are diagnosis, treatments, medication and even supplies used during the contact. It's not only a safety net for both patients and doctors to ensure that everything that happened is documented in case something should go wrong, it is also for insurance purposes. So with such a tedious task at hand, someone has to do the work. And that's why medical transcription jobs are growing.

How's the pay?

Whether you work as an employee in a company or medical facility or as an independent contractor or sub-contractor, medical transcription can be very stressful. It requires you to be sitting down in front of a word processor, with a headset and foot pedal as other tools of the trade, for long stretches of time. You may work regular or irregular hours, beating deadlines and rushing to meet turnaround times.

And among allied health careers, this is the only one where your pay may depend on each line of work you produce. For beginner levels, expect pay rates of 6 to 10 cents per line of transcription. So your goal is to increase your speed to earn more.

With dedication and experience, that may not be so hard to achieve. When starting out, the average beginner has a rate of 50 lines per hour. That's not going to amount to much at 6 cents per line, so you want to get the hang of the job quickly to increase your wage rate.

Let's paint a brighter picture for the prospective medical transcriptionist. The average national hourly rate is between $12.14 and $16.59. Or you can look at it this way: you can earn a medical transcriptionist salary from $24,648 up to $36,057 annually with experience and hard work.  

What you need to work on

If you're looking for tips to make a better medical transcription salary, here are three things to remember:

1.   Speed and Accuracy. Most entry-level transcriptionists will experience wage rates based on a per line computation. So, the first order of business is to improve your speed to at least 100 lines per hour. Medical records are vital documents and accuracy is a MUST.

Unless you work in a big organization, your responsibility includes editing your work. So your knowledge of medical terminology, procedures, and pharmacology are important tools of the trade to present an accurate report. Your listening skills also play a big part to ensure you transcribe the physician's dictation properly.

2.  Medical transcription training and Certification. Unless you have prior medical background or studies, you cannot work as a medical transcriptionist without formal training. A diploma or certificate course that runs from on 9 months to one year is the minimum requirement.

You may also opt for an associate degree that can be earned in two years. It is during this training where you will learn all the basics including anatomy and physiology, medical terminology, pharmacology, medical and clinical procedures, and diagnosis. Although not a requirement, registration for beginners and certification for the more experience transcriptionists will lead to a higher medical transcriptionist salary.

3.   Specialty. You may not actually be doing anything medical, but with a specialization your credentials take you to the next level. Those who earn higher salaries in the business are usually involved with acute care, multi-specialty clinic ER, oncology or radiology. These require advance knowledge and further studies will help you get these accounts, or be associated with organizations or health facilities that deliver these services.

As a beginner, you will prefer to be employed to gain the experience and build your skills and competency. This will also ensure a regular paycheck. Once you have built a reputation and a network, you may want to look into becoming an independent contractor that will allow you to work on your own.

This may be risky and you are not always guaranteed success, but those who have worked hard at it report earning as much as $50,000 annually. Ultimately, your medical transcriptionist salary will be dictated upon by how much you want to succeed in this profession.

Medical Billing And Coding >