DataMatrix Medical review

DataMatrix Medical provides professional medical transcription services to the healthcare industry, and is US-based in White Plains, NY. It endeavors to provide ‘Virtual scribe’ services, allowing clinicians to increase their productivity, while maintaining a high level of quality in their documentation. It is more of a boutique service, with several hundred employees, and used by more than 250 medical practices and hospitals throughout the country. 

DataMatrix Medical not only offers medical transcription services, but a whole suite of related services, including billing, coding and document management.

• You can learn more about DataMatrix Medical here

Features

DataMatrix Medical makes it their core mission to reduce a major frustration for clinicians- the endless documentation and paperwork required to practice medicine these days. After all, nobody became a physician to sit in front of a computer and type notes all day, yet this is the reality in our current times with reports of physicians staying at their offices long into the night after office hours are done to complete their daily notes. Therefore, the core service of DataMatrix Medical is medical transcription, with the goal of reducing physician burnout.

Rather than having to type each note, with DataMatrix Medical the clinician can dictate the note using the phone, a digital recorder, or their mobile app. And unlike many other medical transcription services, there is support for both the Android and iOS platforms.

Next, the notes get transcribed by professional medical transcriptionists. Yes, real live people, that are assigned to the physician’s account then transcribe the dictation with a 98% accuracy rate. Next, the notes go through a “Rigorous multi-tiered quality assurance process” that is designed for a high level of accuracy. Finally, the notes get entered into the physician’s EHR within a 24 hour turnaround time. In addition to just uploading the transcribed note into the EHR, the company provides options for discrete data to be placed directly into individual fields in the EHR, and for different sections of a report to be placed into different sections of the patient’s chart, rather than as a single document.

DataMatrix Medical also has the flexibility to work in other workflow patterns as well. More specifically, some clinicians work with Voice Recognition Software (VRS), as their transcription method. While this is a more affordable option, the issue becomes that the results can be variable, with much editing required. DataMatrix Medical provides the option to work with the clinician’s VRS, that can then check the notes for possible errors, fix any mistakes, and go over the note to make sure they are fully completed avoiding any omissions.

Data security is another challenge with access to EHR’s, and DataMatrix Medical meets this head on. This includes physical security to lockdown access to their servers at their data centers, which are Tier 1, and designed for Zero Downtime for continuous ready access to patient data. This gets combined with their optimal security practices, including hardened operating systems that deploy the latest security patches.

Drawbacks

No dictation service is perfection, and DataMatrix Medical does fall short in some key areas. These include the opaque pricing model that requires company contact for a quote, the lack of detail on support options, and no toll free phone line for sales or support.

The other concern is that DataMatrix medical is a smaller provider, with far less accounts than their more popular competition. While this can mean better individual attention to your account, it also makes them more niche. In fact, after several internet searches, we found not a single user review for their service, outside of some brief quotes on the company’s website, and their Facebook page lacks even a single recommendation of the service.

Support

The support that DataMatrix Medical offers is somewhat amorphous, and not listed specifically on their site, in terms of available hours, or time to response. That said, both a support phone line (disappointingly, not toll free) but at least different than their sales line, and a support email are listed under the company’s contact info giving users a choice for sending their queries.

Pricing

DataMatrix Medical offers a free two week trial of their service to take it for a test drive. It includes 2,000 transcribed lines, the iPhone app, template setup, custom upload to an EHR and a free workflow consultation.

Beyond that things get more murky, with contact required for a custom quote. We can glean from their site that a primary driver of the pricing is the anticipated monthly volume of transcribed documents. The service can be used for primary use as a transcription service, or for overflow work when the demand exceeds what an inhouse transcription team can keep up with. It is also stated that “We will never require you to sign a contract that locks you into our services.”

Final verdict

DataMatrix Medical is smaller than their competition, which allows them to nimbly offer more integration and services, such as an Android app, medical coding support, and working with- rather than competing against- pure software dictation solutions. We wish that they were more forthcoming with other particulars, such as their pricing, available support hours, and their lack of a toll free phone line. Still, we appreciate the offer of a free trial for two weeks, allowing a physician’s practice to better decide if DataMatrix Medical measures up to their standards.

• We've also highlighted the best medical transcription services