Sanitarium

Practice Management Software is a genre of software used by medical practices to aid with day-day operations. The PMS software allows practices to capture patient demographics, schedule appointments, maintain lists of insurance payers, perform billing tasks, and generate reports.

Most PMS software (in the USA) is meant for small/medium sized medical offices. PMS is often times divided into desktop-only software, client-server software, or Internet-based software.
•Desktop-only software is intended for use by a handful of users sharing access.
•Client-server software requires that offices own server equipment to run the software; so that individuals users’ workstations contain client software that accesses the server. The advantage of client-server software is that it allows multiple users to share the data and the workload.
•Internet-based software is the newer breed of PMS. IB PMS decreases the need for a practice to run its own server [and having concerns over security and reliability]. The prominent security risk of IB PMS is that patient data is removed from the practice itself.

PMS and EMR are many times linked together; much of their information overlaps (patient and provider data). The major difference between PMS and EMR lies in their main purposes. While EMR is more geared towards clinical matters, PMS is more for administrative and financial matters.

Medical Transcription is an allied health profession; which literally deals with the direct transcription of medical data from voice-recorded reports as dictated by physicians/ other healthcare professionals into text format. Since most physicians, in both hospitals and private practices, do not have a lot of time, they tend to voice-record their notes and have transcriptionists later convert them to wither electronic or physical hard copies. Most hospitals prefer electronic copies due to its ability to provide immediate access to subsequent departments or providers regarding the patient’s care. Also, the sheer volume of patients and the accompanying paperwork is becoming overwhelming.
Medical Transcriptionists can be onsite MT’s that work at the hospital, telecommuting employees for the hospital that do most of their work at home, or telecommuting employees that work as contracted MT’s that perform their work offsite from the hospital/clinic/physician group/ other healthcare provider. Some private practices also decide to directly employee a Medical Transcriptionist on site their own offices.
The job of a medical transcriptionist is ever evolving (as long as we keep churning out new and more sophisticated technologies). Today, many MT departments work closely with IS and IT staff to stream in vice and accomplish seamless data transfers through network interfaces. This also allows healthcare providers to be able to use their PDAs and PCs (desktops and laptops) to record their notes and have it immediately reach the MT department for transcription.
The process of medical transcription actually started off in the manufacturing industry. The first process was called MRP (Manufacturing Resource Planning) in 1975. This process was taken into the medical field after the transition to electric typewriters, word processors and computers. Today, Speech Recognition software is becoming overly prevalent in replacing MT’s; but Medical Transcriptionists will always be needed as editors since SR cannot be 100% correct every time. And since many physicians still use short-hand in their notes, transcriptionists that understand the language will be needed to assist the SR in interpreting the notes.