How an EHR with Voice Recognition can save Time and Money

1. Webmedy Blog
2. EHR
3. How an EHR with Voice Recognition can save Time and Money

Everyone wants doctors who listen to their problems. Unfortunately, doctors are often busy preparing notes for their patients on their computers. This frustrates and discourages patients during an appointment, which they may already find unenjoyable. That's why a Voice Recognition tool is important. Voice recognition feature in your Electronic Health Record (EHR) software is a powerful tool that helps to enhance communication and ease the physician's stress while charting.

Voice recognition is replacing traditional dictation across a variety of healthcare information systems. Voice recognition can eliminate transcription costs, but what about transcription errors? Is voice recognition able to understand and interpret like humans? The answer is Yes. It can do both, especially if it is trained.

The natural language processing algorithm of voice recognition enables spoken words to be broken down into particular data fields, not just blocks of free text. Voice recognition can be highly intuitive if an EHR system is programmed to combine dynamic, command-based responses. Today, voice recognition is a critical technology within electronic health record (EHR) solutions. Voice recognition can save critical time and money to further help improve productivity.

EHR system designed for Voice Recognition

For an EHR system designed to function seamlessly with voice recognition technology, doctors should not have to speak in complete sentences or provide comprehensive narratives. An EHR system can, and should, be programmed to exercise dynamic, command-based responses consistent with specific types of procedures, techniques, symptoms, care plans, etc.

Multiple dynamic, command-based responses programmed within an EHR system can drastically reduce the time it would take to perform conventional dictation. Also, physicians' voice files, which they can train to manage their voice and make improvements in real-time to the text in the EHR, can now be saved in the cloud. This means doctors can access the same voice files whether they're documenting in the EHR during a patient visit or on their mobile phone. Plus, the need for transcription is removed entirely, easily saving the average physician $30,000 to $50,000 a year.

EHR solutions that are combined with voice recognition technology reduce the need for dictation and transcription services. Using artificial intelligence, voice recognition technology is programmed to receive command-based responses from physicians about patient symptoms, procedures, and treatment plans. The software is then able to process and capture documentation narratives, including medical terminology and medications, as well as to detect various accents and dialects to deliver automated outputs into specific data fields.

With conventional EHR solutions that don't utilize voice recognition, physicians can spend, in some cases, up to 12 minutes navigating the system and manually entering data to process notes for one patient. With voice dictation, that time gets significantly reduced to 90 seconds or less, because it's easier to use and requires less error management.

Trained voice recognition can help overcome many of the problems surrounding dissatisfaction between physicians. In the absence of voice recognition, physicians usually encounter a lengthy series of screens, tabs, checkboxes, etc. This makes them exhaust 5 to 12 minutes, more than 100 mouse clicks, and plenty of manual data entry to produce a single exam note. By adopting an EHR with trained voice recognition, a physician practice can save a substantial amount of time and money, and boost the number of patients they attend.

Perks of using Voice Recognition Technology

EHR speech recognition can help doctors to capture voice notes at the time of care or between appointments, which can maximize efficiency. Here are some of the main perks of using Voice Recognition:

Summary

Finally, it is important to make sure that any system or technology adopted today is future-ready. As healthcare is evolving to incorporate new strategies and therapies, healthcare information technology is highly dynamic. Any system adopted today should have the flexibility to evolve, ensuring that your practice can continue to offer patients the best care possible. By adopting an EHR with trained voice recognition, a physician practice typically realizes a decrease in overhead and an increase in patient throughput and billable revenue. Overall by adopting EHR with voice recognition will have a positive impact on healthcare in terms of price, usability, engaged support, price, integration, and functionality.