Recently a local doctor told a college student not to enter medical transcription because “medical transcriptionists won’t exist in 10 years”.
Of course, with remote doctors, it’s equally possible to say that local doctors won’t exist in 10 years, but I bet she still tells people to go to medical school.
As my wife, a very busy medical transcriptionist told her, “Who knows WHAT job will be here in 10 years!”
The doctor made this point even though she’s never used an MT and writes her notes long hand.
This is becoming increasingly impractical in the age of digital medical records, so the hospital suggested she get a $40,000 medical records system.
No telling what the annual upgrades will cost, but that sounds like it would pay for a lot of medical transcription.
My wife has been in medical office work for 30 years.
When computers first came out, they were sure that within 6 months half the staff would be gone.
They weren’t… as many people seem to be hired in the offices as before.
One thing they forgot was that as individual offices got computers that could make things more efficient, insurance companies, hospitals and everyone else in the system got computers to make things more inefficient. In the end the “cost savings” that were supposed to be realized in diminishing payrolls were consumed by the computers!
They’ve been saying voice recognition would make human transcriptionists un-necessary for years.
It hasn’t happened yet.
And just because a voice recognition system does work to some degree, it doesn’t automatically check syntax, grammar and spelling. Human editors who know what they’re doing are still going to be needed most likely… just like the transcription shipped overseas and sent back here.
The doctor’s statement also implies that along the way, this person would not learn anything worth knowing.
If her crystal ball’s that good, she should be playing the stock market, not doing career counseling.
What does the future hold?
If I knew for sure, I’d be playing the stock market!
But here’s my impression right now.
The job this girl’s applying for is a government contract that uses human typists. If the world has switched to voice recognition by then, it will be through the contractors like this one who will still use human MT’s to verify the results before they are submitted back.
Since there seems to be a shortage of MT’s now, people entering the field will likely be positioned to handle these editing jobs.
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