The Transcription Center
The Transcription Center provides their customers with a convenient and highly efficient process to meet their transcription needs. By utilizing the services of The Transcription Center, doctors can minimize the time, expense, and overall cost associated with the transcription of documents, redirecting and focusing their valuable resources on the achievement of their primary business objectives and goals. The Transcription Center serves predominantly physicians and clinics in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but also supports the transcription needs of organizations nationwide and in a variety of vertical markets - in one case, even a livestock company!

The Transcription Center receives dictation from their customers in the form of digital audio files, and then distributes these files to their staff of transcriptionists. Each file is transcribed into the appropriate text format and then returned to the customer. A number of challenges are inherent in meeting the customers' needs, including usability, secure file transfer, working with large files, as well as timing and coordination.

The Challenge
The biggest issue facing The Transcription Center is usability. “Most of our clients are physicians and they have more important things to worry about than how to send audio files,” said Cathy Daniels, President of The Transcription Center. “The simpler we make it for them to submit dictation to us, the better.” Security is also a primary concern, as the vast majority of the dictation being sent contains personal medical information and is therefore subject to strict HIPAA regulations. By law, all of this medical information must be transferred securely and must be tracked according to what data has been seen by which users. Not only does this requirement make email an unsuitable transfer method, but often the submitted audio files are considerably larger than most email systems accept.

The Transcription Center had been using an FTP solution, but there were concerns regarding the level of security that solution provided, and some customers were not finding it particularly user-friendly. Management was also having difficulty tracking the status of submitted dictation, which made it hard to determine which transcriptionists were working on which jobs at any given moment.

When The Transcription Center tried to bring on a new customer who could not access FTP, they finally determined the FTP solution was inadequate. “It wasn’t a problem with the system being up or down - our customer just had a ton of firewalls that made FTP access impossible” said Daniels. A new secure file transfer solution was needed, and after researching their options The Transcription Center chose Biscom Delivery Server (BDS), provided as a service by TIC Software.

The Solution
The Transcription Center was able to immediately solve their access problems with Biscom Delivery Server. BDS is a Web-based secure file transfer solution that enables enterprise-class file transfer and secure email. Data transfer is secure, authenticated, and delivered directly from point-to-point. In addition, integrated tracking and reporting capabilities provide a comprehensive audit trail.

“BDS didn’t require our customers to download anything - they could just go to a Web site and log in,” said Daniels. With no need to install an FTP client or open secure firewalls, Biscom Delivery Server’s SSL Web interface was a quick and easy solution. Clients could access the system from anywhere and upload files of any size without having to provide access to their secure networks.

BDS was also much easier to use for both The Transcription Center and their clients. “The Web-based interface is simple enough,” said Daniels, “but BDS also provides an automatic Send feature that enables physicians to put audio files in a local drop-box for automatic transmission to us. That’s a big simplification for our customers and a huge selling point!”

BDS has enabled The Transcription Center to save time and more efficiently track dictation orders. “Thanks to the automatic email notification built into BDS there’s less monitoring for our management team,” said Daniels. “We no longer have to keep checking for new submissions or call our transcriptionists to determine a job’s status.” BDS tracks when a file has been submitted, when it has been viewed, and when it has been modified or updated with a transcription and sent back to the customer.

The Results
The Transcription Center is now implementing BDS for use with all their new clients and customizing the Web interface to reflect their corporate branding. Cathy Daniels points out: “When you’re dealing with professionals your Web site and your interface need to look professional as well. I was very excited when I saw that BDS could be customized to suit our look and feel.”

Implementation has been simple and customer service has been excellent. The Transcription Center is not only saving time and money, but it’s providing an even easier and more secure solution for its customers. BDS has also proved to be more accessible than competing secure file transfer solutions, and that degree of access is essential to business success. “BDS has allowed me take on clients I simply couldn’t have supported any other way,” said Daniels. “Nothing else would work with some of the secure networks we’re dealing with. This is a good, secure system and other people need to use it as well.”

About Biscom, Inc.
Biscom was founded in 1986 and pioneered the fax server marketplace, providing many of the world's largest organizations with its award-winning FAXCOM fax servers. In addition to enterprise fax server products, Biscom also offers hosted fax services, secure file transfer and messaging solutions, file conversion software, and document workflow and automation tools. The company is headquartered in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.

About TIC Software
Since 1983, TIC Software has been helping companies get the most from their HP Non Stop Server technology. TIC consults with customers to understand their needs and create ways to improve IT business services. No matter what the client's industry or business sector, TIC solutions maximize system value and increase service quality.