Background

For 30 years, Manchester Fertility Clinic has offered a wide range of fertility treatments and services.

The clinic has a long-standing heritage in treating infertility. It has a continuous programme of investment ensure that patients benefit from the very latest proven treatment breakthroughs that science offers.

Today, speech recognition is playing a role in reducing their dictation letter turnaround times.

Fundamentally, Dragon is saving the clinic money by not having to rely on a transcription service. This also reduces the risk of confidential patient letters going astray.

Time to Turbo-Charge Turnaround Times with A Speech Recognition System

Before deploying the Dragon Medical Speech Recognition system, doctors at the clinic used to record their notes on digital voice recorders.

Following this, the files would then be sent offsite to a transcription company to be turned into electronic letters that would be returned to and checked by the clinic.

On average, the clinic was producing eight letters per day. Unfortunately, the turnaround time using this process took up to two weeks following a patient consultation.

Alice Frost, Patient Advisor, expands on why the clinic chose to reassess its transcription model:

“The problems with sending out the transcriptions centred on the time and cost involved. Ultimately, the service was expensive to use and quite a drawn-out process that continued after the letters were returned. We then had to add the patients’ names to their letters, add their unique patient reference numbers then format them before sending them out.”

In addition to the time lost, there was a further concern for the team, too.

“Although the letters were anonymized, we weren’t happy with the security aspect and the risks associated with sending patient letters off-site.”

Dragon Medical – Clinical Documentation Precision and Productivity

To address these issues, the clinic decided to assess Dragon Medical.

Dragon speech recognition system has been helping medical professionals achieve their patient care and productivity goals for many years.

Dragon Medical offers a dedicated medical vocabulary, accuracy rates of up to 99% and capable of transcribing at up to 160 words per minute.

Consequently, the software dramatically reduces the time clinicians spend documenting care. In fact, users can save an hour or more per day, according to a number of studies.

Expert Consultation

The decision to deploy Dragon Medical as an alternative to its current process for creating medical documents was made by the clinic’s directors.

They reached out to VoicePower following a presentation by Nuance’s Elite Healthcare partner. The clinic’s directors saw the value the latest in speech recognition technology could add to patient care at the clinic.

How it had the potential to resolve turnaround time issues and save money on external transcriptions – to name a few. Critically, they identified how it could address the issue of confidential patient information being sent to third parties.

VoicePower helped the doctors to get up to speed with Dragon Medical quickly, as Alice explains:

“The doctors received two or three-hour-long training sessions. The onsite training was excellent and it was supported by phone and email backup, which has also been superb. VoicePower jumps on problems immediately and their support is first class.”

“Without their experience of Dragon Medical and knowledge of medical environments, the deployment would have been less efficient. They are really understanding and familiar with the needs of clinicians.”

The Importance of Workflow

VoicePower also created workflow automation commands.

For example, using verbal commands, the clinic’s Dragon users can launch embedded letter templates from within MediTex, its fertility database system.

Furthermore, VoicePower also created commands whereby the existence of new letters is alerted to the secretaries.

High Performance – Quick to Deploy, Quick Returns

A one-month trial was all that was needed for the clinic to benefit from using Dragon, as Alice explained:

Dragon Medical’s accuracy, especially with respect to medical terms, stood out early on.

We have an Indian and a Hungarian doctor on the team and it copes with their accents well. The technology has really progressed.

“I think speech recognition is the way forward for creating medical documentation.”

Furthermore, Dragon Medical has also delivered against the clinic’s requirement to reduce turnaround times.

“The doctors get through their work much quicker now. Personally, we believe that reducing turnaround times is one measure that contributes to improved patient care and Dragon Medical helps us achieve that.”

Evidently, this is particularly true in more sensitive scenarios, where this increased performance can prove invaluable.

In a case where a patient has miscarried, after a consultation, we’re now able to give them a detailed, personalised letter before they leave the clinic that advises them on the next care and support stages that are unique to them.

Up to Date and Detailed

Alice explained that: “Now dictated letters go straight into MediTex for formatting, at that stage, even if the letters aren’t in the right format, consultants can immediately see what’s in the patient’s notes, even if it’s just to get the ‘gist’ about their status and treatment.”

Furthermore, Alice highlighted a particularly important benefit: “This gives the doctors easy access to any updated information about a patient. We would definitely recommend Dragon Medical from VoicePower Ltd.”

It’s fair to say that its benefits – from the boost in productivity, completeness, and accuracy of medical records, cost savings and security – can be appreciated not just by specialists like Manchester Fertility Clinic, but by Primary Care providers through to NHS departments and Trusts across the country.