Rockingham Memorial Hospital’s CIO and CMIO Report Significant Value from Nuance’s Family of Speech Recognition Solutions
Nuance’s Dragon Medical and eScription Speech Recognition Solutions Help Rockingham Memorial Hospital Improve EHR Adoption and Reduce Annual Transcription Costs by $600,000
Burlington, MA – May 27, 2010 – Rockingham Memorial Hospital (RMH), located in Harrisonburg, VA, was recognized last month at Tech Nite 10 for the hospital’s successful use of speech recognition as part of its core healthcare IT portfolio. Today, at RMH, 100 percent of the hospital’s clinicians use Nuance’s speech recognition as part of their clinical documentation process. RMH attributes improved physician satisfaction and increased medical transcriptionist (MT) efficiency to speech recognition. Additionally, RMH has projected that speech recognition will help the hospital save approximately $600,000 in 2010 alone.
By applying background and real-time speech recognition solutions, eScription and Dragon Medical, to its clinical documentation workflow, RMH has realized dramatic productivity gains. In fact, RMH’s medical transcription department has seen overall productivity gains of 91 percent from using Nuance’s eScription platform. Additionally, individual clinicians who use the hospital’s Meditech EHR system are finding it faster to document directly into the EHR with Nuance’s Dragon Medical speech recognition system than with typing alone. Because of its MT productivity gains, RMH has been able to turnaround medical reports faster than outlined in their original goals. RMH’s desired turnaround time (TAT) at the beginning of the speech recognition implementation was:
- Emergency Radiology Report — to be final in less than one hour
- In-Patient Radiology Report — to be final in less than three hours
- Out-Patient Radiology Report — to be final in less than eight hours
Today, however, average TAT is far exceeding RMH’s original goals:
- Emergency Radiology Report — eight minutes
- In-Patient Radiology Report — eleven minutes
- Out-Patient Radiology Report — thirteen minutes
“Speech recognition technology along with the supporting IT infrastructure has finally reached a maturity stage that is viable for healthcare. Any healthcare organization that has not tried speech recognition or has not tried it in recent years, now is the time,” said Mike Rozmus, vice president, information services and CIO, Rockingham Memorial Hospital. “Physicians need a variety of documentation tools, including speech recognition, to enable them to work efficiently and to support the creation of high-quality, electronic health records. By deploying speech recognition tools we have realized improved patient documentation, which in turn facilitates improved patient care. At the same time we have increased physician satisfaction with our transcription services and reduced costs. Speech recognition will help us save $600,000 in the first year of use.”
RMH deployed the eScription background speech recognition platform in September of 2009, replacing medical transcription solutions and services from Spheris (recently acquired by Medquist). The transition to eScription was seamless and very well received by RMH physicians. Since the switch, clinicians have noted improved quality in their documentation, as well as faster turnaround times. While many reports are available in less than 20 minutes, overall the average TAT for all volume through eScription is less than one hour. As part of the eScription workflow, clinicians’ dictations and MT edited notes are made available within RMH’s Meditech EHR system, where physicians can review and sign their notes shortly after seeing the patient.
In addition to using eScription background speech recognition, nearly 40 percent of RMH’s emergency room clinicians rely on Dragon Medical for the creation of medical notes in real-time. With Dragon Medical, doctors dictate directly into the Meditech EHR system, creating medical records immediately. With real-time documentation, physicians can easily provide other doctors with access to their records for shared evaluation and treatment plans. Because there is no reliance or support necessary from medical transcription, Dragon Medical has helped RMH to eliminate nearly 40 percent of its medical transcription costs in the Emergency Department. Additionally, the savings RMH realized as part of its eight week Dragon Medical pilot phase covered the cost of the software in its entirety. Beyond benefits in turnaround time, RMH physicians cite that Dragon Medical is helping them create documents in a personally preferred format where they can easily document the unique patient story; for some, this allows faster review and comprehension of their own and other clinician’s notes.
“All RMH physicians now use Nuance’s speech recognition to document patient encounters,” said Dr. Robert Underwood, physician and chief medical information officer, Rockingham Memorial Hospital. “With eScription, there is zero disruption to physicians’ workflow, yet efficiency gains in the background speed the time it takes for patient reports to become final in the EHR; whereas Dragon Medical provides the option for real-time documentation. Depending on physician workflow preference, as well as on the priority of the information being documented, I believe both scenarios of speech recognition are helping our team work more efficiently. This, in turn, allows us to create and share patient information faster than ever before.”
“By combining the capabilities of our background speech recognition platforms with our real-time Dragon Medical solution, provider organizations like Rockingham Memorial Hospital are seeing dramatic reductions in transcription costs while simultaneously experiencing significant improvements in clinicians’ use of, and satisfaction with EHRs,” said Peter Durlach, senior vice president of healthcare marketing and product strategy. “Nuance is uniquely capable of providing an integrated front-end and back-end solution that enables provider organizations to deliver a progressive blend of EHR-centric workflow options to their clinicians.”
RMH is an independent community hospital that serves its seven-county surrounding area; the 270-bed hospital admits more than 15,500 inpatients annually. For more information on Rockingham Memorial Hospital please visit: http://www.rmhonline.com/
For additional information on all of Nuance’s healthcare IT solutions visit: http://www.nuance.com/healthcare/products/. Nuance’s background and real-time speech recognition solutions work to make physicians more productive as part of their clinical documentation process, resulting in better quality notes, improved use of the EHR and efficiency gains that drive cost savings for the healthcare enterprise. No matter the size or current documentation workflow in place at a healthcare organization, Nuance’s speech recognition solutions can drive further improvements.
Nuance’s Healthcare Business
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 5,000 healthcare provider organization customers worldwide, Nuance has the experience and solutions that meet the individual needs of any size healthcare provider organization.
About Nuance Communications, Inc.
Nuance is a leading provider of speech, imaging and customer interaction 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. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com.
Nuance and the Nuance logo 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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