Medical transcription cost: Offshore companies charge 13 cents per line vs. U.S. 15 cents

From AMedNews:

43% of hospitals and medical clinics sent transcription work out of the country in 2009 - up from 35% that did so in 2008.

Offshore companies charge an average of 13 cents per line of copy, while domestic ones charge an average of 15 cents.

Turnaround time wasn't much different because, for example, "In India, they are working while you are asleep."

Overseas medical transcription companies scored lower on quality because of missing words, grammatical errors, and misspellings.

Alternatives to transcriptions include:
- electronic medical records
- speech-recognition software

References:
Offshore medical transcribing becoming more common. AMedNews.com.

Related: Leading speech-recognition software from Amazon:

$295,000 In Medical School Debt... Why do medical schools charge students so much money?

Rob Centor:

"Why do medical schools charge students so much money? It was not this way when I went to medical school. I paid an average of $1000 per year in the early 1970s.

Using an inflation calculator, that would become around $5000 per year in current dollars. Yet that same school and most state schools charge 3 times that much."

References:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/23/295000-in-medical-school_n_473601.html
http://www.medrants.com/archives/5327

Image source: OpenClipArt.org, public domain.

Taking charge of your toddler's vaccination record is the best way to ensure they don't miss any shots

From Reuters:

"In our country, we think the doctor should have all the medical records," said Dr. James McElligott, a pediatrician at the Medical University of South Carolina who worked on the study. "I like the idea of putting the ownership back in Mom's hands and empowering her a little bit."

When parents kept a so-called shot card, their child's odds of being up-to-date on vaccinations rose by more than half.

40 percent of the toddlers had a shot card, and 84 percent of these had up-to-date vaccinations. By contrast, only 79 percent of the children without a card had all their shots.

Use the card: it doesn't have a downside and it's cheap."

References:

Want kids' vaccinations up to date? Keep the record | Reuters, 2010.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61E37I20100215