Dictating Productivity and Efficiency

Talk to anyone related to the healthcare industry and they’ll tell you – the delivery of accurate and timely information is critical to patient care. Physicians have many options available to them to aid in the capture of patient information.

Some physicians prefer to handwrite their own notes, however handwriting is time consuming and often times the results lack necessary information detail. In addition, handwritten notes that are illegible can lead to inaccurate or delayed reports. Other physicians choose to facilitate the capture of patient information utilizing templates in EMR-based systems. Although more efficient than handwriting notes, utilizing templates to gather information can lead to incomplete documentation for unique patients and situations.

How can physicians spend minimal time compiling information yet deliver accurate and complete reports to their patients? Proper dictation is the solution.

A major focus of today’s organizations is improving staff productivity and gaining higher efficiencies without jeopardizing client care or the final product. Whether you are a busy hospital, clinic, or private office you are looking at getting things done faster and easier with the best possible output. Annual transcription costs at major hospitals across the United States often exceed $1 million. The challenge to providers is to make the best use of technologies available that not only benefit their patients with regard to accurate and timely information, but also benefit their operations as a result of improved efficiencies that lead to cost savings and better business management.

There are many solutions available today, and those solutions continue to evolve. Over the past decade, digital dictation solutions have transformed the dictation process.

The Case for Digital Dictation + Workflow

Traditionally, physicians used analog tapes to dictate. Tapes break and they are subject to loss resulting not only in re-work, but also loss of secure, patient information. Tapes hold up the document turnaround process as often a single tape contains multiple dictations, none of which can be transcribed until the tape is full and given to the transcriptionist.

Tapes also pose a challenge to the transcriptionist. It is difficult to identify what jobs are on a single tape or quickly access a priority job that might be sandwiched in the middle. Management has no view of how many jobs are awaiting transcription, which jobs are priority, or which support staff members have too much work while others have none.

Adoption of a digital dictation method solves some of these challenges. Digital dictation is a method of recording and editing the spoken word in real-time in a digital audio format. A basic digital dictation system (such as digital handheld devices for voice capture coupled with an email application for audio file delivery to the transcriptionist) allows authors to record digital files and have them routed directly to a pool for transcription. There are certainly benefits to this solution over a traditional analog tape system. Such benefits include easy editing or insertion of voice into the files, the ability to email the files from anywhere and better sound quality.

A digital dictation workflow management system offers event greater benefits that a basic digital voice acquisition platform alone cannot provide. A digital dictation workflow management system enhances the benefits of digitally collecting voice while embracing the management of the flow of information after capture. This type of system offers an abundance of additional benefits.

A common question is how does a digital dictation workflow management solution compare to the use of, say, a basic handheld digital recorder coupled with email?

The two systems are far different. Simplified digital dictation systems lack important system management tools to enable managers and users to clearly identify backlogs of work to be completed, information on who is doing what, information on support staff efficiency, promotion of priority projects, or the ability to reroute work as needed. As a result, organizations who utilize these systems often do not realize all the benefits that a better developed system could offer.

Digital dictation workflow solutions, by contrast, address all the common problems healthcare organizations experience as mentioned before. They eliminate issues associated with:

• The inability to monitor productivity, track down job status and reallocate to available resource
• The inconvenience of manual allocation of tapes and files throughout the organization
• The high costs for tape and unit replacement
• The need for remote dictation and transcription and improved document turnaround time

Imagine having the ability to know instantly how many dictations are pending for completion and who is working on what while also having the ability to configure a system that can identify and remedy bottlenecks in the production process. These are just a few of added benefits that a workflow solution provides that a standard digital dictation system does not.

Mobile Dictation – An Emerging Trend

In today’s environment it is highly important that an organization’s staff has the ability to be totally mobile while still having access to their core business applications such as Internet, email and dictation. No organization can afford lost productivity for staff members that are constantly on the move. Dictation applications are now available for mobile devices operating on the Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and Symbian Operating Systems. These applications integrate right into the digital dictation workflow system to offset the challenges presented by the need for staff mobility. The solutions are secure and easy to use like desktop applications with the convenience of full mobility, and their effects on the dictation and transcription process is significant.

Dictation via PDA or smartphone grants both flexibility and convenience to the physician with the functionality of a handheld recorder. Mobile applications developed specifically for healthcare environments provide physicians with instant access to patient schedules. They enable dictations to be captured without the need to dictate patient identifiers and work types resulting in improved accuracy and efficiency.

There are several advantages to mobile dictation. Such advantages include: improved physician productivity, improved document turnaround time, immediate access to patient information, and better patient health information security that results overall to better patient care.

Third Party System Integrations

A key component when looking at how you may gain the best possible productivity out of software solutions is integrating the software into other 3rd party products to automate the manual tasks staff normally need to undertake. Integration not only speeds up the process, it also ensures that input information is consistent between systems.

The challenge for organizations is not only choosing the right solution to meet business needs, but also leveraging that solution with existing application investments. In the past, systems have been cobbled together. In today's business environment, true application integration is not a choice, it's a necessity. A key question to ask when seeking a digital dictation solution is how will this solution integrate with my existing systems?

The WinScribe Solution

WinScribe is a world leading provider of digital dictation software supporting business requirements for digital dictation, transcription, voice recognition, and workflow management. Founded in 1989, WinScribe has offices in the USA, UK, New Zealand and Switzerland, with more than 100 sales partners in over 25 countries supporting more than 350,000 users worldwide.

WinScribe’s digital dictation solution is one that has been developed with the requirements of the medical profession in mind. WinScribe recognizes that the healthcare sector has specific requirements for dictation, including the need for efficient turnaround of transcripts to provide patients and physicians with fast, quality results.

Using a PC, a touch-tone telephone, a handheld digital recorder, or mobile device, the system enables healthcare professionals to record their dictation when required from wherever they are using the device that suits them best. Within seconds of completing the dictation, the file is automatically delivered for transcription.

WinScribe Mobility Suite

WinScribe has supported mobile dictation since the first version of the Windows Mobile Operating System was released in 2000. As pocket PC and smartphone technology evolved, WinScribe’s mobile application also evolved to ensure that our clients always had access the most sophisticated technology to meet their ever-growing needs. Today, WinScribe has expanded its mobile platform offerings to continue to offer its users a wide range of options to ensure flexibility.

WinScribe offers a sophisticated Windows Mobile application designed specifically for healthcare users. This application provides physicians with the ability to capture dictation without the need to dictate patient identifiers or the need to memorize key codes and work types. Each dictation is uniquely identified with the provider, patient information, and report type eliminating the need for the transcriptionist to locate this information.

New additions to the WinScribe Mobility Suite include dictation applications for BlackBerry Smartphones and the Nokia N95 Smartphone. WinScribe for BlackBerry Smartphones and WinScribe for Nokia N95 are exciting developments as the adoption of smartphone devices by healthcare providers increases. Not only do these applications enable physicians to instantly transfer dictations to typists while on the go, they also enable organizations who have already embraced mobility to deploy an advanced workflow system without incurring additional hardware costs. Far from being a glorified note taker, the WinScribe solution provides physicians with full dictation functionality, including insert, over-write and job type selection. As well as being easy to use, these solutions are secure and meet the requirements for patient data protection.

WinScribe Integrations

By providing web services-based integration tools, WinScribe delivers the benefits of a totally integrated digital dictation solution leading the market with its advanced integration architecture. Our applications are built to be flexible and scalable for every client's requirements. WinScribe products are built on Microsoft architecture and make use of SQL & Microsoft .Net technologies. With a built-in software development kit (SDK), WinScribe can be tailored to provide the maximum benefit to end users. In addition, WinScribe has a team of development staff members in each of global office available to work with clients to develop and support their unique integration needs.

Because of WinScribe’s advanced architecture, integrating business applications with WinScribe is quick and easy. A few of WinScribe’s current integrations for healthcare systems include: AGFA PACS, Amicas PACS, Emageon PACS, Fuji PACS, GE PACS, Insignia PACS, McKesson CrossWay, Philips Stentor PACS, Philips Sectra PACS, ProMedicus PACS, Symphonia, and TurboMed / Turbo RIS.

The solution also supports the HL7 standards, making it simpler to integrate into hospital system environments. HL7 is a health industry standard designed to allow disparate computer systems talk to each. This standard language has been adopted by WinScribe, enabling it to fit directly into any Hospital IT infrastructure. As dictations flow through WinScribe, HL7 based messages are sent as progress reports to the relevant stakeholders throughout the hospital.

Try Before You Buy

WinScribe offers its prospective consumers the opportunity to try the WinScribe suite of products before they buy it. Conventionally, firms see a demo, invest in a purchase, roll out software and hope for the best. “Try before you buy” is of growing importance. The best digital dictation implementations start first with a no cost, departmental roll-out that gives organizations the ability to iron out software and workflow challenges. Once the pilot is complete, the procurement process concludes with a successful, firm-wide rollout.

To request your test drive of the WinScribe product suite, please visit www.winscribe.com/testdrive . To learn more about what WinScribe can do for you, please visit us at www.winscribe.com or call (866) 494-6727.