Over the last 30 years, medical documentation solutions have had many advancements and options. Typically, the decision comes down to your medical provider and their workflow. This can also be affected by the turnaround times desired and the time the medical provider wants to spend documenting the patient encounter. Let’s talk about the pros and cons of each of the healthcare documentation solutions that are being offered in the marketplace today.
For over 30 years, physicians have been dictating into dictation systems either calling the system using a telephone or using a handheld recorder, and/ or possibly an application on their smartphone. The system records their dictation and presents it to a transcriptionist, who will listen and type out the notes for the physician in the desired format based on the type of work. It generally takes 24 hours for the work to be returned to the physician, either on paper or electronically in the EMR, to allow the physician to read through the documentation, make any edits necessary or dictate those edits back to transcription which starts the process over. This is faster for the physician than manually documenting in the EMR utilizing the keyboard and mouse as the typical physician dictates at 100 words per minute and only types at around 40 words per minute. Another benefit is the physician can be mobile, walking down the hallway or driving in a car, as they are doing their dictation versus inputting at a PC.
Pro: Faster than keyboarding into the EMR and allows mobility. Accuracy is at a high degree 94% or better.
Con: Typically, 24 hours before the physician gets their work back from transcriptionist to manually edit or dictate changes to complete the chart.
The Voice Products Difference:
Our experienced medical transcriptionist is dedicated to each client. Immediate turnaround and next day available. We offer both hardware and software, mobile and call in. If you would like to learn more click here.
There are many benefits to speech recognition for the physician as it also allows them to navigate the EMR with their voice eliminating 100s of mouse clicks. Speech recognition is also faster than keyboarding in the EMR as the physician typically dictates 100 words a minute versus typing. Speech recognition allows a physician to place the cursor anywhere they would type and just talk. We call this once and done as they can make edits on the fly, not have to wait for transcription to occur, and can immediately sign the report.
Pro: No need to wait for a transcriptionist to produce the report, the report is available immediately to edit and sign, hence once and done.
Con: The physician needs to read over the documentation and make sure that the speech recognition has picked all the words correctly and make any edits necessary. All the work is done by the physician.
The Voice Products Difference:
We offer three options to fit any budget and workflow. Two out of the three options are BEST IN KLAS options. Can turn any mouse click, dropdown, checkbox, radio button, keystroke, tabs, templates, open files, folders, apps and websites, or a combination of steps, into a simple voice command shortcut. Totally EMR agnostic. Unlimited service and support. If you would like to learn more click here.
Medical scribes come in various forms. Some are virtual on an iPad or smartphone and some are on-site. Some scribes have medical backgrounds, reducing training times, but many do not. A medical scribe will listen to the conversation between the physician and the patient and document it in the physician’s EMR live, and if they have a medical background they'll be able to document to the physician’s charting style. If the medical scribe has medical training they can also take care of patient intake for the nurse. Scribes with medical backgrounds can also place prescriptions and orders for the physician to sign. Scribes without medical training will take time to conquer the other aspects of charting discussed previously. In general, scribes eliminate the physician from performing the documentation themselves, which is extremely time-consuming as well as allow the physician to spend more quality time with the patient for a better patient experience.
Pro: Having a medical scribe can save up to 2 hours a day for the physician on their documentation, allowing them to spend more time with each patient, increase the number of patients seen, or have quality time with their family.
Con: Depending on the scribe you hire (whether they have medical experience or not) the training that is involved, turnover, and their benefits depending on if they ae onsite or not.
The Voice Products Difference:
Our partner MD Scribes provide virtual medical scribes that are licensed physicians that have 6 years of medical education and real work experience. They have a true passion to help the providers and patients. They are individually trained ahead of time in your EMR, with your desired work style. Can perform quality HPI, capture ROS and PE, assessment, input Dx & CPT codes, input orders, update problem list, and medication reconciliation, as well as function as medical interpreters. With our MD Scribes virtual medical scribe service you get all of this for the price of what you would pay a MA, with a 30-day notice contract. If you would like to learn more click here.
The most recent technology that has emerged is Artificial Intelligence Transcription. This technology utilizes a microphone in the room to listen to and record the patient-physician conversation. This voice file then goes through the artificial intelligence/ speech recognition engine and transcribes the document based on that conversation. Most of these solutions require an editor in the background to help teach the AI what parts of the conversation are relevant to the medical record. This is typically a 24-hour process before the physician can review, edit and sign the document. Being a relatively new technology, it is not known how it will scale price-wise for large institutions or if it's viable for smaller entities.
Pro: Eliminates the physician having to document the encounter with the patient.
Con: 24-hour turnaround time, price, scalability, as well as very little data to validate the accuracy and effectiveness of this new technology.
The Voice Products Difference:
We offer the latest AI medical documentation solution called Corti it automatically documents and has an option to code every patient encounter that instantly takes unstructured data, converts into structured data directly integrated into your EMR. Easy pricing structure. +100 million patients covered, +17 million patient consultations supported, and +7 years of medical AI development. If you would like to learn more click here.
Voice Products has been a leading medical documentation provider for over 33 years. Set up a quick meeting or demo today to discuss which documentation solutions can benefit you the most.