DELIVER HEALTH STANDARD LINE COUNT

The Deliver Health Standard Line Count in the Deliver Health system is calculated when the transcriptionist delivers the typed report to the server. In general, Standard characters are all visible characters and invisible characters that are used to produce the final output. The count comes from what is entered by the MT into InScribe or from information selected by the MT in InScribe. The following pictures from the Deliver Health InScribe system show what characters are counted.

Standard Characters are totaled from these areas.

• Text in the Demographic Area fields (outlined in red) are counted if filled in. Birth date and Appointment date are counted as 8 characters.
• Text from the Associate Record (outlined in green) are counted if filled in and the associate is attached to the transcription. (Does not include Copy ID or check boxes at bottom.)
• All text in the Document Text Area (outlined with purple rectangle) are counted.

Note: The following is NOT counted.

• Text in the Comments Area box.
• Physician name and credentials from the Authentication box
• Demographic fields - Dictation Date and Location.

Characters are counted as follows:

Characters are totaled when the MT delivers the report to the Deliver Health server, divided by the Divisor, and rounded up to the next integer. The Divisor is a value that can be adjusted for each client or each document type within a client. The default is 65.

The final delivered transcription is the product of the Print Template which uses the InScribe information. The result of the print template is not used to determine the character count.

VISUAL BLACK CHARACTER (VBC) LINE

The Visible Black Character ("VBC") count in the Deliver Health system is calculated when the transcriptionist delivers the typed report to the server. The count comes from what is entered by the MT into InScribe or from information selected by the MT in InScribe. The following pictures from the Deliver Health InScribe system show what characters are counted.

Visible Black Characters are totaled from these areas.

Text in the Demographic Area fields (outlined in red) are counted if filled in. Birth date and Appointment date are counted as 8 characters.

• Text from the Associate Record (outlined in green) are counted if filled in and the associate is attached to the transcription. (Does not include Copy ID or check boxes at bottom.)
• All text in the Document Text Area (outlined with purple rectangle) are counted.

Note: The following is NOT counted.

• Text in the Comments Area box.
• Physician name and credentials from the Authentication box.
• Demographic fields - Dictation Date and Location

Visible Characters are totaled when the MT delivers the report to the Deliver Health server, divided by the Divisor (default is 65), and rounded up to the next integer to arrive at the Visual Black Character or VBC Line Count.

The final delivered transcription is the product of the Print Template which uses the InScribe information. The print template output is not used to count visual black characters. The following is an example of the Print Template result of the above InScribe example. It has been annotated to show which characters were counted and which character were free.

CHARACTER COUNTING METHODOLOGY

In the days of typewriters, a transcription was typed on a piece of paper measuring 8.5 inches by 11 inches with 1 inch margins on the left and right sides. The font size produced 10 characters per inch for a maximum of 65 characters (visible and non-visible) for each typed line on the page. Each line on the page was counted as one line irrespective of how many characters comprise the line.

• A line was counted as one no matter how short it was. A line comprising only the word "Subjective:" was counted as one line.
• Blank lines were not counted.
• For long multi-sentence paragraphs, each typed line ended at the space immediately preceding 65 character positions from the beginning of the typed line. That is, the sentence was wrapped to the next line at a space, not the 65th character.

In the following examples, we will use ">>" to represent a Hard Return (also called carriage return or Enter Key).

Example 1:

I had the pleasure of seeing your patient, Mrs. Gloria Anderson,

in clinic today, January 31, 2007. She presented with a severe

cough and fever.

In a gross line count, this one paragraph of two sentences comprises three Gross Lines as it takes up three lines on the page.

• The first line has 65 characters - visible characters and spaces.
• The second line has 64 characters.
• The third line has 16 characters - 14 visible characters, 2 spaces.

In determining the number of characters in each gross line:

Essentially, the visible and printing characters (such as spaces) from each paragraph are counted, divided by 65, and rounded up to the next integer to determine the gross lines for that paragraph. Blank lines are not counted; that is, a paragraph without any text is not counted.

The text from the same row in a table, are combined to form one paragraph before counting. Demographic and Associate record fields are combined into one paragraph before the gross line counting is applied.