Case Study — Character and Line Counts

CLIENT: A large specialty orthopedic practice with several locations.

SITUATION: This group practice was working with two transcription companies. As the relationship progressed and the doctors required more formatting in their documents, the monthly bills increased dramatically. Neither transcription company offered technology to meet their needs. The client was unable to analyze the charges as the transcription companies only provided a summary invoices with no details on how it counted characters and lines. Ultimately, the administrator and finance manager became concerned over the significantly increasing costs of their documentation, and they contacted Scribe.

SOLUTION: Scribe performed a line count audit. In its process, Scribe reviewed and analyzed hundreds of sample documents from both vendors. Then, Scribe created a comparative analysis of the pricing practices utilized by both organizations. The table below illustrates the differences in character counts and the resulting line counts:

Sample Content	Transcription Vendor A	Transcription Vendor B
This is a standard paragraph. This is a bold sentence. This is a bold and underlined sentence. This is a bold, underlined, and italic sentence. THIS IS A BOLD, UNDERLINED, ITALIC AND CAPITALIZED SENTENCE.	206 Actual Characters 8 Bold Characters 6 Underlined Characters 4 Italic Characters 6 Capital Characters 230 Characters Vendor A Line: 65 characters = 1 line Total Line Count: 4 lines	206 Characters 146 Bold Characters 126 Underlined Characters 93 Italic Characters 56 Capital Characters 627 Characters Vendor B Line: 50 characters = 1 line Total Line Count: 13 lines

In this situation one vendor was charging 3.25 more lines than the other by counting an inordinate amount of characters due to formatting.

COMMENTS: Ultimately the client purchased Scribe technology and reduced volume provided to Vendor B. In addition to the benefits of the Scribe platform, the client is saving almost 20% over their prior monthly documentation expenses.

Scribe will conduct a line counting audit for your organization. To request an audit or get more detailed information on Scribe call 1-866-SCRIBE2 or email sales@scribe.com.