Transcription services enable hospitals to dictate the savings

September 30, 2010
by Olga Deshchenko, DOTmed News Reporter
This report originally appeared in the September 2010 issue of DOTmed Business News

At a time when health care technology is booming, facilities can take advantage of several options to help them speak-up about budget saving practices – literally.

Rockingham Memorial Hospital in Harrisonburg, Va. began using speech recognition and transcription services last year. By employing two different solutions, the facility advanced its documentation processes and trimmed costs along the way.

Speech recognition software comes in “two flavors,” explains Michael Rozmus, the hospital’s VP of information services and CIO. If physicians are using front-end technology, the words they dictate are automatically displayed, enabling users to edit and approve information immediately. If they are using back-end software, or deferred speech recognition, their dictation is converted into a written draft and passed on to a transcriptionist, who essentially becomes an editor. The transcriptionist is responsible for checking over the document.

“Both ways, it definitely saves us money,” says Rozmus. “For the ones that are doing the front-end speech recognition, [that information] isn’t going off to any background system for processing or through a background editor for review, so that cost is entirely avoided. For the physicians who are picking up the phone and using speech recognition, that editing process is much more efficient and much more cost-effective than the straight typing.”

About 96 percent of all dictated lines at Rockingham Memorial Hospital are funneled through the speech recognition software, says Rozmus. The savings prove to be significant.

“We’ve already budgeted and achieved most of our estimate for this year,” says Rozmus. “We projected $600,000 in savings in the first year and it looks like we’re going to even go beyond that.”

The hospital uses a combination of in-house and outsourced transcriptionists. Both teams use the same product to do the editing work on the submitted documents. Transcriptionists are able to get through more documents quicker because the speech recognition software alters their role. Instead of having to type the dictation from the physicians, transcriptionists just look over the drafts generated with the help of the software. Rockingham Memorial has increased the productivity of its in-house transcriptionists by about 90 percent, says Rozmus.

“We can take on more work without having to add staff. In fact, right now we’re looking at taking some of the work that was previously outsourced and bringing that in-house because this group has more capacity,” says Rozmus. “That in turn, reduces overall cost.”

The current health care landscape – reimbursement cuts, a focus on cost control and the transition to EHRs – is boosting the adoption of speech recognition and transcription services, says Peter Durlach, senior VP of healthcare marketing and product strategy with Nuance Communications. His company’s health care business offers a portfolio of speech-enabled clinical documentation and communication solutions.

In North America, medical transcription services account for about $7 to $10 billion in costs for hospitals using both in-house and outsourced transcriptionists, says Durlach.

“Speech, depending on which product you’re talking about and depending on the specific adoption curve, as well as the needs of a given health care organization, can eliminate anywhere from 25 percent of the reliance and cost associated with medical transcription up to 100 percent,” he says.

Individual physicians may or may not be affected by the financial savings associated with speech recognition services. However, employing such solutions allows them to complete their notes quickly and spend more time with their patients.

Regardless, physicians at Rockingham Memorial will continue to rely on speech recognition and transcription solutions.

“We’re always trying to reduce costs in health care and make it more efficient for the physicians to do work and make sure that the quality, accuracy and timeliness of the documentation to care for the patients is available to them,” says Rozmus. “If we improve our documentation process, we can make better and faster clinical decisions by having all the data available to the physicians.”

In addition to the potential savings, transcription services can assist in bolstering the budget. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services recently released the final “meaningful use” rules facilities can use to assess their eligibility for the associated financial incentives. Streamlining documentation processes can expedite the conversion to EHRs and place providers in a better position to reap the rewards.

“I think speech recognition is certainly a technology that, in the last probably two or three years, has really reached its maturity level in health care. It’s really become part of the way we do business,” says Rozmus. “We’re even looking at expanding our use of it as we move towards our complete electronic medical record, where physicians are actually doing more of their documentation within the electronic chart.”