Nuance Communications Inc. today announces that Dukinfield Medical Practice has deployed Dragon Medical Practice Edition to help the practice stay one-step ahead of its medical document workflow while freeing up doctors to spend more time with their patients.
The deployment – in partnership with Nuance Healthcare Connections Premier Partner, Freedom of Speech, has enabled the team to process clinical documents more quickly and accurately. Previously, the practice’s six GPs had been using digital voice recorders to dictate notes that were then transcribed by secretaries, a costly process that was prone to backlogs.
The Nuance speech recognition software has enabled Dukinfield Medical Practice’s GPs to transcribe detailed, accurate notes directly – the team is already enjoying accuracy rates of 95 percent, which is improving each time Dragon Medical is used.
The speed with which the reports are completed has enabled the practice to treat four more patients per day – this is particularly important for the practice, which is facing the challenge of patient numbers rising by approximately 5 percent a year.
The GPs have also reported that patient letters are now much more detailed than before, capturing a complete view of the patient’s story which, in turn, leads to better care. The new process has also enabled the secretarial team to concentrate on other, more patient-focused, tasks.
Practice Manager Julie Pregnall explained, “Like many medical practices, we were facing the challenge of maintaining our high-quality patient care and serving the community against the backdrop of rising patient numbers. This meant that we needed to look at our processes to see where we could drive further efficiencies. With Nuance’s clinical speech recognition solution, we’ve been able to improve the speed and quality of our medical records which previously were quite fragmented.”
Simon Wallace, Chief Clinical Information Officer at Nuance Communications continues, “GPs have a difficult balancing act to play for medical records. Whilst they know that more detailed reports with greater context around the patient’s lifestyle can support better ongoing care, doctors are time poor and want to treat as many patients as they can in the time they have. I’m delighted that Dukinfield Medical Practice has seen such productive results – for the GPs, secretaries and patients alike – with little disruption to the way the doctors work.”
Dragon Medical Practice Edition is designed specifically for GP surgeries and medical centres. It provides advanced clinical speech recognition capabilities including a wide range of medical vocabularies and macros. Dragon Medical makes it quick and easy to update electronic patient records – freeing up more time to care for patients.