Daily times cotes:
Fearing it may be preparing students for a diminishing profession, San Juan College will shut down its medical transcription program at the end of the school year.
Many health care professionals anticipate computer programs will soon replace medical transcriptionists.
The School of Health Sciences will focus on modernizing the coding and health information technologies degrees instead. Students with those degrees are qualified for better paying jobs, said Oliver Borden, the dean of the health sciences school.
"One of the reasons we're getting out of (medical transcription) is because there is less room for advancement" as medical transcriptionists, he said. "We're choosing to focus on a major that has the brightest future."
The 30 students currently enrolled in the medical transcription program have until the end of the school year to complete the two-semester program.
Medical transcriptionists have an average salary of $24,000 to $30,000 dollars per year, and there are few opportunities for earning a raise in that field, Borden said.
On the other hand, students who graduate with a health information technology degree from the college are more versatile, and if they turn their associate degree into a bachelor's and then a master's degree, their average salary would increase to $81,500, Borden said.
"It gives them a chance at life-long learning," he said. "There are stepping stones that are available."
Hospitals and health care providers are switching to electronic medical records and a new coding system, Borden said. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is predicting a 22-percent increase in jobs in the health care industry by 2018. The college is reshaping the health sciences school so students can get those jobs, Borden said.
Several local health care providers said in recent years they have outsourced medical transcription services or begun using computer programs for the service.
"It's cheaper and a lot faster," said Tabitha Joyce, the office manager for High Desert Rheumatology.
A year ago, High Desert Rheumatology and Internal Medicine started outsourcing medical transcription services to Intivia, a New Jersey-based company that uses a computer program to make transcriptions within 48 hours. Read More...
