Starting a Medical Transcription Business – Guidelines & Business Plan Sample

Did you know that a transcription business can help serve a wide variety of patients and clients? Why is that? Transcripts are essential in fields such as business, medicine or law. The nature of the work means that it’s limited time as one can easily start to do it in their spare time or even as a part time job before making the leap to take it on full-time.

Essentially, this particular business is perfect for those who enjoy working on their own schedule and at their own pace. There are certain services that a transcriptionist is needed for which can require a more strict schedule such as a court reported but most of the work that involves can be audio or video and it’s provided for you. It’s actually ideal for those people who type fast and are comfortable using related software, technology and computers!

What is a typical day like for a transcription business? Basically the business is to transcribe speech, edit the document and deliver it to a client. Most activities would be making contact with prospective customers, advertising your business and managing your business to help meet the needs of your clients.

If you’re unsure who your target audience is, it’s really depending on what field you want to be involved in such as hospitals, doctors, lawyers and more. Your ideal client can vary but basically you want to work with major businesses and corporations to have a steady clientele. These larger number of employees will help bring you large projects that need your attention and service. Also, your quality of work can result as well.

One important aspect to understand is how does your business make money? They make money by charging their clients for the act of the transcribed document. This payment arrangement can be negotiated between the client and yourself as well as a fee for the amount of minutes that you transcribed the document. You can also bill them according to the number of hours you took to complete the project as well.

Once you start to receive many jobs and you begin to specialize in a certain kind of transcription, this can help you maximize your job security! For instance, the medical transcription field has really boomed within the last 10 years.

Are you thinking perhaps this job may be something you’d be interested in? The primary skills that can help build your business is typing. If you don’t think you’re an extremely fast typer, start with taking classes that you can do online or offline to help you develop these skills. It’s important to have good grammatical rules to save you time as well as proofreading via services like Grammarly to help edit your own work.

Good listening skills are key as well as any formal training or previous work to help you. In addition to having these great skills, there also may be some cost to opening up your own business. You’ll want to probably start working from home so you need a computer with a good foot pedal to allow you to start and stop audio without your hands. Typically, these pedals can cost from $40 to over $100. You can email or call potential clients to get started.

Another way to make sure your at home business runs smoothly is having your own office area to work from. You don’t want to be distracted during this time so invest in a comfortable chair, desk area to keep things organized. You also want to have a clear plan that is essential for success.

A few important topics can be your initial costs, target market and how long it might take you to break even. You also need to register for a variety of state and federal taxes before you can open your business. Make sure you have the proper permits and licenses otherwise you may get a hefty fee or cause your business to shut down if you don’t have everything in place.

The last thing you want to do is make sure you have a business website that allows your customers to learn more about your company, your service that you offer and the product. You also can use social media to help attract new clients or customers.

Of course the most important question to think about your business is how to make it as profitable as you can and essential the only way to really do that is improving your typing speed. This can mean that you need to reduce your distractions and your home office area plus having a keyboard to help give you familiar phrases.

Lastly, you will be more profitable the longer you are in the business. As a fast typer, your network will grow and you will eventually have as much work as you could ever want. Put in the hours, put in the effort and time and know that this will become a reality the more passion you put into it.

FAQS