AthletiCo’s Combined Use of Background and Front-end Speech Recognition From Nuance Helps Make Patients’ Medical Records Available Fast
AthletiCo Streamlines Clinical Documentation; Front-end Speech Recognition Decreases Medical Transcription Reliance by 38 Percent in Twelve Months
Burlington, MA, February 2, 2010 – Nuance
Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) a leading supplier of speech solutions, today announced
that AthletiCo, an Illinois-based
leader in physical therapy, occupational therapy, and fitness services, is
using a combination of background and front-end speech recognition from Nuance
to improve and speed the way patients’ medical records are documented
and shared.
AthletiCo has been using the background speech recognition capabilities of
Nuance’s Dictaphone
Enterprise Speech System, also referred to as “Turbo Speech,” since
2002 and in the fall of 2009 deployed Nuance’s front-end component, Enterprise
Workstation. Beyond significantly reducing the time and costs associated
with clinical documentation, front-end speech recognition has helped AthletiCo
decrease its reliance on medical transcription by 38 percent in one year.
Today, AthletiCo has 360 clinicians across its 55 sites using speech recognition
to document patients’ medical reports. All clinicians dictate on an
open floor setting either via mobile device or at a PC dictation station.
From there, one of two workflow scenarios ensues.
- Background: Clinicians dictate with wireless PDAs and
dictations are processed through a Dragon-based background speech recognition
engine, where a high-quality draft medical record is created and sent
to a medical transcriptionist (MT) for review and editing. After
this, the record is sent back to the clinician for final review and signature. AthletiCo’s
documents are finalized based on their assigned work type to meet timely
turnaround requirements.
- Front-end: Dictation appears on the computer screen
in real-time for the clinician to immediately self-edit, sign and share
with other caregivers or with the patient. With this workflow, medical
report creation is immediate.
“Our dual use of background and front-end speech recognition has significantly
reduced our reliance on, and therefore the cost associated with medical transcription,” said
Heather Franks, director of operations, and AthletiCo Ltd. “Moreover,
real-time reporting capabilities have allowed our clinicians to create reports
instantaneously when necessary.”
At AthletiCo, patients oftentimes have multiple visits that may occur within
48 hours of each other. This high frequency of treatment contributes
to added demand on clinicians to ensure patients’ medical records are
documented in a timely manner. It also requires medical transcriptionists,
when utilized, to be highly efficient in order to meet document turnaround
requirements. By allowing clinicians the option to use front-end speech
recognition, in addition to the background workflow, AthletiCo ensures that
patients’ notes are created and shared without delay.
“One benefit of using Enterprise Workstation is that documentation that
was previously handwritten is now created with front-end speech recognition,
making legible patient documentation available considerably faster,” said
Daphne R. Scott, PT, DSc, regional manager, AthletiCo. “Various
special features of the software, such as creating shortcuts for regularly
repeated parts of documentation and pronunciation training for harder to
recognize words, including names, allow the system to work effectively and
efficiently, and more importantly frees-up time for the clinician.”
Approximately 3,500 documents are created at AthletiCo everyday. On
average, 500 of those notes are created with background speech recognition
and 3,000 are created with the use of real-time speech recognition. Today,
AthletiCo has a team of 14 part-time MTs and three fulltime MTs to support
the background speech recognition workflow. Before implementing Enterprise
Workstation, AthletiCo relied on a larger MT support staff. As part
of the introduction to the Enterprise Workstation component, AthletiCo first
deployed front-end speech recognition at two facilities. Because of
the benefits in turnaround time and reduced cost, AthletiCo has now deployed
the Enterprise Workstation component at all of its sites and expects continued
increases in savings on medical transcription.
“Healthcare organizations that rely on traditional medical transcription
are oftentimes spending more time, money and resources than necessary,” said
Peter Durlach, senior vice president, healthcare product strategy and marketing,
Nuance. “AthletiCo’s integrated use of background and front-end
speech recognition has delivered benefits that can be replicated for other
healthcare organizations working to produce high-quality medical reports,
more quickly than with traditional transcription and at a lower cost. Nuance’s
healthcare speech recognition solutions allow customers to create the same
volume of work at lower costs.”
Nuance’s Dictaphone Enterprise Speech System, designed for on-site deployment,
offers scalability and flexibility to meet the demands of any size healthcare
organization with multiple departments and geographic locations. By
helping to make MTs more productive as editors vs. having to type documents
from scratch, the System’s background speech recognition workflow drives
an increase in MT productivity, significantly reduces the cost of transcription
and delivers medical reports faster as compared to traditional clinical documentation
processes. For documentation types that have a real-time availability need,
the Enterprise Workstation component enables clinicians to create and complete
dictated documentation without transcription. For more information visit: http://www.nuance.com/healthcare/products/enterprise_workstation.asp
AthletiCo
Since 1991, AthletiCo has been the
proud provider of rehabilitation, fitness, and performance services to many
professional teams, performing arts companies, endurance programs, golf associations,
volleyball clubs, high schools, colleges, and events in Chicagoland and Central
Illinois. AthletiCo provides outpatient orthopedic rehabilitation including
physical and occupational therapy, work rehabilitation, performing arts rehabilitation,
women’s health therapy, spine control, pediatric physical therapy,
vestibular rehabilitation, and athletic training/sports medicine. Expanded
services include performance enhancement, fitness center memberships, golf
fitness, endurance, nutrition, and massage therapy.
Nuance Healthcare
Nuance’s
healthcare portfolio of proven, speech-enabled clinical documentation
and communication solutions enable healthcare provider organizations to improve
financial performance, enhance patient care, and increase patient safety.
With more than 3,000 healthcare customers worldwide, Nuance has the experience
and solutions that meet the individual needs of any size healthcare provider
organization. All of Nuance’s healthcare solutions can be seen at HIMSS
at Booth 7633.
Nuance Communications, Inc.
Nuance is a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions for businesses
and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications
and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming
the way people interact with information and how they create, share and
use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses
experience Nuance’s proven applications and professional services. For
more information, please visit www.nuance.com.
Nuance, the Nuance logo and Dictaphone are trademarks or registered trademarks
of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or
other countries. All other company names or product names may be the trademarks
of their respective owners.
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