At the heart of transcription billing practices is what I call a billable unit. A billable unit can be any unit of measure agreed upon between the customer and the provider, including but not limited to:

Recorded Minutes: The number of minutes recorded as reported by a dictation system or (in the case of portable digital recorders) work file information.

ASCII characters: In the transcript, the reference is to printable ASCII* characters.

characters: A 65 character line is nothing more than characters divided by 65 to get a “line”. The “visible black character line” is nothing more than counted characters excluding those that cannot be seen with the naked eye.

gross line: A raw line is defined as any number of characters that occupy a line of type, regardless of font or length.

raw page: A page containing any text as it would be printed on a printer.

There is no such thing as a “standard” rate or what some call a “going rate.” If you’re in a facility that contracts outsourced transcription services, no one can tell you if what you’re paying for transcription is reasonable, fair, or equitable. The requirements from installation to installation are too different for that. A colleague at another facility in the same city may tell you that their line rate is much lower than yours and you need to renegotiate it, but unless you share the details of the contract and both facilities operate on exactly the same terms, you’re not making a mistake. apples to apples comparison Your billing fee can be very reasonable for the services you are receiving. You can read in a post that “no one should pay more than $0.XX per line” for transcription, but that ignores the details of what the client requires and the definition of a billable unit. Statements like this have contributed to ongoing problems with contracted rates and billable units.

Similarly, if you are an outsourced medical transcription service, you must determine for yourself what fee to charge and whether or not you can make money on that fee. Owners of medical transcription services frequently hear rumors about the “going rate,” either from other transcription service owners or potential clients. unless you know What what rate is calculated and what services are included in that price, it would be irresponsible to base your own prices for services on what you have heard or been told.

If you’re a medical transcriptionist working in production, it’s up to you to make sure you understand how production pay is calculated and reported to you. The company you work for has a responsibility to help you do this, but they don’t have to pay you in the same unit of measure they bill the customer. With privacy and security requirements in the medical documentation industry, it is becoming increasingly difficult for transcriptionists to independently verify their output. Therefore, it is even more important for a medical transcriptionist to understand how units are calculated and offset.

There are three factors in transcription: price, quality and delivery time. Regardless of what a transcription service may promise, it is only possible to deliver two of the three. If the price is low, the quality and/or delivery time are affected. The higher the price, the better the delivery and quality.

It would also be irresponsible of us to have a discussion about what constitutes an “average billing rate” for transcription services in the United States. What we can do is help facilities determine if what they are being billed for is consistent with the contract and if they are actually receiving the services described in the contract.

* Wikipedia definition of ASCII characters.