Here is the question: are you looking for temporary help or a permanent medical transcription supplier? The answer is; Yes. Say again? As it is often packaged, you have only two choices: 1) obtain temporary help to get you out of a transcription jam, or 2) obtain a permanent supplier to do all your work. But are these the only options? How about a better one, a middle ground? Permanently keep temporary help. Why? Advantages: Like a good Boy Scout or Girl Scout, with temporary help permanently on call, you are prepared for the inevitable.

Here are some things that are truly inevitable:

1) Your typists will get sick, and they won't give you a two-week notice when it happens. But you won't care if you have planned ahead.
2) They will have babies. How long are you prepared to wait till they can get back to work? Generally in a short day or two and you already have problems.
3) They will go on vacation. Even if you know the vacation is coming up, it won't help much; your work will get behind. But, with a built-in temporary staff, when they do, you won't even notice.
4) Your equipment will crash and you will need time to fix it. But when you plan ahead, your work will not suffer.
5) Does your typing staff know they can be replaced so easily? You know, when you think about it, that's not so bad!
6) And don't forget, company obligated SS payments, the company portion of the State and Federal Withholding, Medicare payments, paid sick days, paid vacations, equipment costs and space allocation are no longer your problem when you outsource.Disadvantages: There are disadvantages.

For instance, when work is skimpy in your office, the overflow service will still be looking for something to do even though you could cover it easily in-house. Also, when things go south and you have to send a glut of dictation out for transcription, the work may be turned a bit slower. After all, they aren't used to that much work every day. Conclusion: As is so often the case in life, the middle ground is the place likely to serve you best. Keep yourself in a position to do the unexpected overflow of dictation, quickly and without pain.

Keep a service "on staff." Give them a small amount of work daily with the understanding that they will be there for you when problems develop. And keep this point in mind, when they are needed to step up to the plate, they won't be wondering where the plate is. They will already know how you like things done: formatting, vocabulary usage, delivery of work. Everything will be in place to serve you smoothly. But remember this, if you are a stranger to them, the likelihood that they will feel obligated to get your donkey out of the ditch will be small indeed. And even if they did care-"Now how do you want this formatted again?"

You get the idea? It's painful to develop a working relationship from scratch-especially in a work glut. And this one extra point, when you need temporary help don't say to the service "we only need help until our girl gets back from vacation (or having a baby). Often you will hear "we don't do temp work." Why would they say that? Because it takes a great deal of time and effort to learn how you like your work done, how you want documents formatted, what vocabulary you tend to use and how develop that interaction with your office.

And just when it's beginning to get figured out-"we won't be using your service any longer." With that in mind, why would they do temp work?So make a deal with them; we have a temporary need but we plan on using your service permanently for all types of overflow. With that type of long term benefit, you will find many services willing to go the extra mile now-knowing that effort will have long term advantage later. Does maintaining a temporary service permanently make sense to you?