Centura Health cutting up to 95 transcribers systemwide

Centura Health, which manages Penrose-St. Francis Health Services’ two hospitals and 17 other health care facilities in Colorado, is eliminating 90 to 95 medical transcriptionists systemwide, officials said this week.

The jobs are being outsourced to MedQuist, a transcription service based in Mount Laurel, N.J., said Mike Scialdone, chief financial officer at Penrose-St. Francis Health Services.

Eighteen employees at Penrose-St. Francis will be affected, along with transcriptionists working at Porter, Littleton, Parker and Avista Adventist hospitals and St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center in Pueblo.

Employees are being offered jobs with MedQuist and can roll over their tenure, Scialdone said.

“Because of the pressures in health care on reimbursement and cost, we have to constantly evaluate whether we’re providing the most effective quality service,” Scialdone said.

The move will save Centura Health $1 million annually, he said, citing advancing medical technology and a lack of qualified medical transcriptionists as reasons for the decision.

There’s a shortage of workers in medical transcription. They earn a mean hourly wage of $14.74, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Medical transcriptionists convert medical records, lab reports, office notes, diagnostic studies and other information about patients into a computerized format.

Centura expects to have an electronic medical-records system in place in December with patient health information in computers, not on paper.

The system requires costly equipment to process new speech recognition technology, Scialdone said.

“Instead of taking resources away from patient care, we decided it would be more advantageous to partner with a company that would allow us to have access to the technology and could provide the same, if not better, turnaround times and service at a price that would be cheaper,” he said.

Outsourcing medical transcription is a growing trend for hospitals as electronic medical records become more widespread, said Rick Haugh, spokesman for the Colorado Hospital Association.

“It’s cheaper for a hospital if they’re faced with having to invest in expensive technology to accommodate digital files, or spending the money on direct patient care,” he said.

Memorial Health System, a city-owned enterprise with two hospitals in Colorado Springs, has had difficulty recruiting transcriptionists, said Cindi De-Boer, a Memorial official.

Memorial has 29 transcriptionists on staff, she said.

“To the extent we have openings we can’t fill, we outsource that work,” DeBoer said. “Hospital transcription is more difficult than physician-office transcription and requires specialized training.”