Nuance - I Speak Dragon

A year ago I announced to the Shareholders and Upper Management of our Orthopedic Practice that I would be implementing Dragon Medical Voice Recognition Software into our clinics. The current rise in Electronic Health Records was forcing us to take that first BIG step towards the electronic medical records. To say the least, our Physicians were less than enthused and in some cases refused to use the computer all together. Instead, they wanted the out dated form of transcription, Dictaphones. My how the tide has changed from a year ago. Currently, I have 16 out of 21 Physicians, who are using Dragon Medical to dictate their office visits. Not only has the implementation of Dragon Medical saved us thousands of dollars in transcription costs, it has had a direct impact on our patient care, patient volume, and staff expenses. Because we are now able to access notes within seconds of them being dictated, our clinical staff can pre-authorize procedures that help diagnose our patients much faster. In the past our patients would have to wait days and sometimes weeks to be scheduled for an MRI. Now, the MRI is being scheduled and performed the same day as their office visit. This is also true for surgical procedures. Our patients are able to schedule surgery much faster because our staff is able to obtain a pre-authorization almost immediately after an office visit. Case Managers that accompany patients to our clinics love the efficiency of being able to walk out the door within minutes of completing the visit with the Office Note in hand. We have several Case Managers who have vowed to bring all of their patients to our clinic for this reason alone. Patient Care as a whole has been positively affected and we are still seeing more of those effects each day. I was doubted by my peers and the Physicians when I first introduced the idea of using voice recognition software in lieu of transcription. However, Nuance’s product is so well developed that the implementation process was simple. Pairing the Dragon software with Powermics turned what was first thought of as an impossible task into a reality. We look forward to seeing what the future holds for Dragon and how we will be able to implement those developments into our clinics.