Medical Transcriptionists

The U.S. Department of Labor reports that employment of medical transcriptionists will decline by 3 percent through 2028. There will continue to be opportunities for medical transcriptionists because health care reform has given more people the opportunity to acquire affordable health insurance, which means an increase in patients and medical reports. Also, people are living longer and they will require more medical tests and procedures—which will require transcription. But the introduction of back-end speech recognition technology has made medical transcriptionists more productive and, therefore, limited growth in this profession. Even with these technological advances, medical transcriptionists will still be needed to review electronically created documents. Those with experience, certification, and advanced education will have the best job prospects. 

Medical transcriptionists are taking on new roles in the preparation of electronic health records (EHR). According to the Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity, "these include entering critical encounter information directly into an EHR system, monitoring EHR documentation to ensure accuracy and completeness, and performing quality assessment reviews. Health care documentation specialists are second only to physicians in the amount of content inputted directly into the EHR."