Radiologists, Medical Transcriptionists Use WinScribe Digital Dictation Software to Improve Turnaround Time By as Much as 150 Percent
Radiology and medical transcription departments are using voice recognition and digital dictation software to reduce backlogs and improve the quality of medical reports. Medical records are an important part of a quality patient care continuum.
Chicago, IL (PRWEB) August 14, 2006 -–
WinScribe (http://www. winscribe. com), a world-leading provider of digital dictation software announces that their digital dictation solution is helping radiologists and medical transcriptionists to reduce the time to produce medical reports by as much as 150 percent.
In most hospitals, radiology and transcription services are no longer department-centric, meaning that backlogs or errors in reporting from these groups can affect the progress and quality of patient care throughout the organization. Digital dictation software with voice recognition capabilities can help improve the accuracy of reports and the speed at which the dictation is transcribed. Advanced workflow features within the software let users choose how and when dictation is transcribed and how reports are routed.
“Our clients are able to see how a change in one area, dictation, can greatly impact the workflow of other areas,” said Matthew Weavers, chief executive office at WinScribe. “The reduction in turn-around times saves time, money, and we hope that it helps improve the quality and timeliness of patient care.”
Aiken Regional Medical center (http://www. aikenregional. com) relied on an overseas outsourced solution for their transcription needs. At the end of each day dictation was downloaded to the service provider and would start trickling back 24 to 36 hours later. Reports were then manually cut and pasted into Aiken’s Radiology Management System (RMS), adding further delays. A report took an average of 48 hours to complete.
Now, Aiken uses WinScribe digital dictation solution. Once a report is dictated it is immediately routed to the speech recognition server for conversion from speech to text. Aiken transcription staff receives both the dictated voice file and a near-perfect draft of the dictation.
Using WinScribe’s PC/Internet transcription application, transcriptionists correct any errors. The completed report is then automatically merged into Aiken’s Radiology Management System (RMS) via WinScribe’s HL7 interface.
At the same time, WinScribe submits the corrected text back to the voice recognition server, which uses the corrections to make adaptations to the radiologist’s voice profile. This constantly improves the voice recognition accuracy.
‘WinScribe has eliminated the requirement to cut and paste transcribed text into Aiken RMS cutting average report turnaround by up to 48 hours. Reports are available to physicians on average 90 minutes after the radiologist dictates the report. Transcription productivity has improved by more than 150 percent’, says Howard Sanford, Aiken’s Radiology Department head. ‘By automating most of the manual processes, WinScribe has eliminated costly and inefficient human error. The reports are available in our RMS sooner and without mistakes’.
Before switching from a competitor’s digital dictation system, Midwest Heart Specialists (http://www. midwestheart. com) of Illinois experienced a backlog of 4,000 transcription jobs due to staff losses and sicknesses. WinScribe has played an integral part in the organization’s strategy to improve workflow. This has been achieved to a great extent by the ability to route jobs to different transcriptionists according to peaks and troughs in workload.
“We now have a centralized transcription pool instead of lots of scattered transcriptionists working on jobs independently,” says Colleen Kuhn, Office Manager. ”It is also a lot easier to set up users in this system, especially when trying to divide up pools.”
Ultimately, the WinScribe solution delivered immediate cost savings. The upgrade to Midwest Heart’s existing system to allow integration into their EMR system was going to cost double the price of the WinScribe system. On top of this there would have also been the expense of purchasing proprietary hardware.
“The cost of the new Dictaphone system would have been double what we paid for WinScribe so we made an immediate cost saving and we can also now use whatever hardware we want,” says Jayne Radek, director of operations at Midwest Heart.
According to the Medical Transcription Industry Association (http://www. mtia. com) (MTIA), the United States spends $6-12 billion per year transcribing medical dictation into medical text.
About WinScribe (http://www. winscribe. com)
WinScribe is a world leading provider of digital dictation software supporting business requirements for digital dictation, transcription, voice recognition, and workflow management. First developed in 1995, WinScribe has offices in the USA, UK, New Zealand and Switzerland, with more than 100 sales partners in over 25 countries supporting more than 300,000 users worldwide. WinScribe is fully customizable to meet the needs of a number of significant vertical markets including Legal, Law Enforcement, Healthcare, Transcription, Insurance and Government sectors. www. winscribe. com
For further information contact:
Tamarie Johnson
TNT Communication Inc
503-345-9257
Lucy Farrington
WinScribe
+64 9 486 9010 ext. 817
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