University Transcriptions has recently offered to help any NHS Trusts with any medical transcription and translation work needed. Whether this is dictation, research interview recordings, focus groups or general audio, the company has capacity and is ready to help in this difficult time (written during the Covid 19 crisis). It is quite possible that NHS organisations are going to find they experience severe shortages of medical secretaries and administrative staff and it is here that we can help at very short notice and with little needed in the way of infrastructure or equipment.
What capacity do you have?
University Transcriptions are operating normally with full capacity to assist. To put this into context we have 45 fully assessed, Transcription Society member (Standard, Advanced or Expert accredited) transcribers based in the UK and able to assist. We can also draw on additional capacity as required, when required. Sometimes clients have ongoing projects that run to many 100s of hours over a period of many years. We transcribe and translate in any language from around the world, although our focus is on English to English transcription work. Turnaround times can be extremely fast as required – you just need to let us know your requirements.
How can we be sure you will remain open and able to help?
Firstly, you are going to need assistance from companies who are able to stay open, whether or not they are within the government criteria for essential businesses. One of the key requirements at the time of writing this is for a company to be able to comply with the The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020. This legislation essentially closed down all businesses in the UK (similar legislation has been enacted in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) if working from business premises.
Remote Working – 20 years Experience
University Transcriptions is not affected by the legislation, which means we can continue to operate as normal. Our transcribers are able to work from home and our head office operations are currently also housed in our managing director’s home, with our support staff working remotely as well. We have been remote working for almost 20 years and this presents no issues for our company. We have nothing to set up, no equipment or processes to put into place.
GDPR Compliance
One major issue that presents itself for NHS organisations when looking for remote outsourced suppliers of dictation, transcription and medical note services is the need for all processes to comply with the data protection principles tightened up recently by the GDPR regulations. The ICO (Information Commissioners Office) talks about the seven principles of the regulations: Lawfulness, fairness and transparency, purpose limitation, data minimisation, accuracy, storage limitation, integrity and confidentiality (security) and accountability.
To put any purchasing officer’s mind at ease, here are our responses to these principles.
Lawfulness – we only retain personal data and audio recordings for the specific use of transcribing the recordings and return to our NHS clients.
Fairness & Transparency, Accuracy & Purpose Limitation – no personal data is stored for any of the data subjects referred to in the recordings. The only data we keep for our customers relates to quote requests and for the purposes of billing. Data for quote requests is usually entered by our clients directly. We retain no other data from your orders, apart from information needed to bill for the work undertaken.
Data Minimisation – we retain no unnecessary data at any time. Quote requests only contain the bare minimum for us to provide you with a price. Check out the information needed by clicking an automatic quote request on the site.
Storage Limited – we only retain audio recordings on our servers for a period of one month. After this they are deleted. Transcriptions are retained for as long as requested by clients but for a minimum of 12 months as a company-wide policy.
Security and Accountability – we are ISO 27001 accredited for our IT systems and security. Our GDPR compliant secure UK based server service is also ISO 27001 accredited. We have been assessed for compliance with GDPR by IASME and our accreditation is renewed annually. We hold Cyber Essentials and have also completed the NHS Digital Toolkit for IT Security. Our company also holds ISO 9001 for its quality system, maintains an effective complaint and remedial service and prides itself on its ISO 14001 environmental management system. We are corporate members of the Transcription Society, all our transcribers are individual members, and we hold professional indemnity insurance, employers liability insurance and public liability insurance.
Have you worked with NHS Clients before?
Yes, many times over the last 20 years. Clients have included NHS trusts, PCTs, academics working on projects on behalf of NHS clients, individual medical practitioners. We have undertaken standard medical transcription, research interviews, focus group recordings, patient interviews, staff research interviews. A number of our transcribers are experienced medical secretaries and a good number are also former researchers at graduate and post-graduate level.
Recent NHS and Medical Clients
NHS Tayside, Alder Hey, Central & North West London NHS Foundation Trust, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, NHS Wales – Public Health Wales, University of Dundee School of Nursing and Health, NHS Grampian, NHS Tayside and Northwick Park Hospital.
How do we get work to you?
Very simple – just click the link on our upload page to use our GDPR compliant UK based server. We will ensure that there is always capacity available for NHS clients to upload over the next few months and we will prioritise NHS work going forwards.
Contact Us
If you have any questions about the service we can offer please contact our Managing Director Anna Gresty here.
