You heard it from the horse’s mouth. A Vancouver, British Columbia medical record transcriber says patients have reason to worry about the privacy and accuracy of their medical information, according to a story at CBC News.

Donan Forde, as interviewed by Kathy Tomlinson, said it’s because “all dictated reports by hospital physicians in B.C.'s Lower Mainland will soon be transcribed by private contractors, accessing and working on records from home.”

But it’s happening all over the world, governments doing it to save costs. It’s all part of a government-mandated exercise in Canada to shave $100 million from health budgets again in Canada, and a study says that “contracting out medical transcription will save $3 million toward this goal, mostly in labor, rent and technology costs.”

But any money saved may wind up costing patients their personal information, at the very least, Forde believes, and healthcare organizations maybe much more.

“I think it should remain in the hospital – not in someone’s living room or kitchen or den,” Forde, who has worked as a medical transcriptionist for 14 years, told Tomlinson. “For five years I worked in the private sector and not once did anyone come and check to see if my home computer was password protected to see if I had a working environment that was private – not in five years.”

And it’s already happened. In 2011, a Pakistani medical transcriptionist threatened UCSF Medical Center that she would release to the Web the hospital’s patient records that she had been transcribing, according to a story by Marilyn Trapani. To show just how serious she was, the woman sent UCSF an e-mail with actual patients’ records attached.

Outsourced medical transcription is usually performed by home-based subcontractors who must put in about double the hours to earn the same wage, and work with few benefits, according to Hospital Employees’ Union (HEU). 

Forde said he’s also worried about the accuracy of reports done entirely by private transcribers, because they are paid per report, instead of per hour.

“[Working for a private contractor] I will just get through as many reports as quickly as I can – trying to make a buck,” Forde told Tomlinson. A study found that it can definitely push up costs, because some businesses were known to increase billings by 151 percent between the fiscal years 2006/2007 and 2010/2011, according to HEU.

But getting back to the data security question, HEU’s secretary-business manager Bonnie Pearson says contracting out medical transcription is too big of a risk. “Outsourced medical transcriptionists do not have access to secure electronic medical records or other health care team members within the hospital system,” she said in the HEU story.

Forde told Tomlinson he’s not against outsourcing, he, too, thinks contracting out all medical transcription services is simply too big and too risky.

But governments think differently. “The difference between the technology and the labor combined will save our health system over $3 million a year,” Yoel Robens-Paradise of Providence Health Care, who is in charge of the outsourcing project for the four health authorities in the Lower Mainland, said in Tomlinson’s story.

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