Many U.S. medical language specialists are afraid of work being outsourced offshore, yet the reality is there is more than enough work to go around. In fact, most service providers are drowning in work in the U.S. due to the volume of documents regularly being produced and the lack of trained workers to handle it. Teams from the Philippines and India are highly trained, highly skilled workers who are adaptive to current trends. After reading Thomas L. Friedman's national bestseller, The World Is Flat, it is easy to understand how the Internet, technology and e-mail are bridging the gap between continents and eliminating the unknown.

This story is about two MTs who bridged the gap and are flattening the world of medical transcription. Lori and Deng come from different parts of the globe-one who works from home in the U.S. and the other from SPi's facility in the Philippines-but have identical missions. Lori and Deng work together to provide U.S. hospitals with high quality, accurate and timely clinical reports. And they've learned a few new skills along the way!

About Us

We talk shop: how we got our starts in the field of medical transcription, what we love about our jobs, what we'd like to change. We talk families: marriages, children, parents. We talk style: a new outfit, a new hairdo, a new nightclub. We laugh, we chat, we share. We do what any colleagues do. We connect.

We both work for SPi, a global leader in providing business process outsourcing (BPO) services to health care services provides across the U.S. We met in Pittsburgh, working side-by-side to become trainers on the speech recognition capability that we are adding to our service offering. Putting a face with a name was important to us. One of us works onshore and one works offshore, but at the end of the day, we are just people who work in different locations.

Our tales have similarities and differences, but they lead to the same path-providing U.S. hospitals with medical language specialists, editors and technology that are "best shore."

Both Lori and Deng knew medical transcription was their "calling." Lori, who lives in Austintown, OH, was drawn to the field because of her love for words and interest in medical terminology. She thrives on transforming a doctors' dictation into an accurate and timely medical record. She went to a local college to become an MT and quickly became a lead MT at a hospital. Lori has worked in the business for 28 years with the past 15 spent in quality assurance and training. In her current role, she trains new SPi employees how to use the company's technology platform. She also enjoys helping MTs understand what they should-and should not-include in the transcription report, e.g. cornua vs. cornea.

Deng is from Manila, Philippines. She became an MT in 1999 after earning her bachelor of science in nursing, and working for a few months as a nurse in one of the country's leading hospitals. One day, she came across an MT job posting requiring applicants to have a background in allied health, a keen attention to details and a knack for listening. She knew the job was for her. Her background and familiarity with medical terms has proven to be a big asset. For instance, when transcribing an operative report, she can actually picture the steps the doctor is taking during the surgery.

Deng joined SPi 5 years ago as a supervisor in the health care business unit. She was initially tasked with transcription but was fairly quickly promoted into a role where she was charged with the training and mentoring of new and existing employees. Other allied health professionals such as doctors and dentists work as medical language specialists as well. Today Deng is a quality manager, overseeing quality assurance for all health care projects performed by her colleagues in Manila.