Transcription Market Share Analysis

JOHNSON CITY, TN — Of the estimated 2.1 billion patient encounters documented in the United States in 2015, approximately 32%, or over 670 million documents, were generated by dictation and transcription, according to a new market analysis from WebChartMD.

The analysis (click here to access) breaks out the clinical documentation market into the three main documentation methods most often used by healthcare providers: 1) Provider Entry, in which the healthcare provider enters data him/herself into the EHR; 2) dictation and transcription; and 3) Scribe Entry, in which Medical Scribes enter data into the EHR.  Front-end speech recognition usage was not included in the study.

Provider Entry is the leading clinical documentation method, with an estimated 61% market share, followed by dictation and transcription, with an estimated 32%. Scribe Entry trails with an estimated 7% market share.

Dictation and transcription, the second most-used modality, had its heaviest concentration of usage in ambulatory specialty care and hospital-based documentation.  The medical transcription industry had estimated 2015 sales of $2.2 billion, or 20.6 billion annual lines. About 30% of all US-based physicians – or just over 300,000 – continue to use dictation and transcription for some percentage of their clinical documentation, according to a recent WebChartMD estimate.

A notable change in the break-out of market share has been the rise of the Scribe Entry segment, which has grown from a few thousand to over 20,000 Scribes nationwide in just the last few years. Scribes currently process an estimated 143 million patient encounters annually, or about 7% of the entire clinical documentation market.

One take-away from the analysis? “The government has spent billions of dollars since the 2009 HITECH Act to incent physicians to adopt EHR-based clinical documentation tools.  Despite that, there remains a sizable minority of healthcare providers who continue to use dictation and transcription,” said Christensen. “While transcription will never return to its former levels of usage, I believe there are a number of specific reasons why it will persist as a clinical documentation modality.”

About WebChartMD

WebChartMD, a software development company specializing in clinical documentation workflow applications, partners with over 100 MTSOs nationwide, which in turn serve over 8,000 physicians via the WebChartMD platform.