EMR Customization - Mandatory

Each medical practice is unique unto itself, EMR's are not. Because the government mandates to make everything "standardized", EMR's attempt to put all data, no matter how varied, into the same box. For this reason, it is paramount that a physician customize his EMR so that his patient notes are as unique as each of his patients. We have been able to do this with the use of Dragon Medical Practice Edition (DMPE) and now we can take it a step further with NoteSwift.

EMR Options – the Power of Middleware

After months of investigation, speaking with your peers and other industry experts you have selected the EMR that is most correct for your practice, right? WRONG! More times than not, your billing and receipts are reduced, your workflow is impaired, you may even lose some employees in addition to spending endless hours compensating for the disruption. Relax, you're not the first one; this is so much “the norm” nowadays that very innovative thinkers have brought to you "middleware" which will bridge the gap between your patient visit and the ultimate charting into your EMR. One well-known solution is Dragon Medical Practice Edition (DMPE) and there are more that make that solution even better such as NoteSwift. Remember, just like selecting your EMR, the mix of these products and "best-of-breed" solutions are dependent upon Extraordinary Professional Services such as provided by our firm Healthcare Information Technologies, LLC (HIT).

EMR – Discrete Data, Narrative & Customization

Not only is digitizing man's speech the wave of the future, how it is implemented is also one of the “top topics” lately. Please keep in mind, whereas pointing and clicking through matrices are critical for E/M coding, PMH, medications, lab values, etc., it does not provide an HPI which is unique to each patient. Therefore, not only is customization of one's EMR critical, so is customization and template building within the speech recognition system.  Call me directly at 772-223-4683 for an evaluation.

EMR Replacement and/or Selection

When you originally purchased your EMR you undoubtedly listened to the best, loudest or best looking salesperson. Now that you find that your EMR does not suit your practice, slows you down and reduces your reimbursements you’re faced with the entire process all over again. Our advice is "don't go it alone" – retain a professional who is in the market, understands the difference between general practice, specialties and customization. One who knows the inside track! The mistake we see a lot of physicians making is relying on their friends, who in most cases, know less than they do – the proverbial case of "the blind leading the blind!" Don't forget, if you are a specialist, many labs will pay the bill for your replacement. Please consider us your resource in this area: http://www.emr-hit.com/EMR/emrhelp.php. We're in practices day in and day out as we implement Dragon and improve workflows – we see a lot of EMR's…

SPEECH RECOGNITION – STATE-OF-THE-ART for Coding…

Not only is man’s speech becoming rapidly digitized, there is also technology of which you should all be aware – Natural Language Processing (NLP). Whereas a speech recognition engine understands what you "say" , NLP understands what you "mean”, thus, when utilized within Electronic Medical Records it can actually assist you in decision support and coding. Stay tuned, more to come...

WORK ENVIRONMENT-Two Places at Once!

Just as in life, when working with technology it is important to know your environment. Whereas many of today's medical technology applications are virtual (hosted in the cloud) the higher performing applications are hosted on the user’s local device. Consult your speech recognition expert to achieve optimum performance. The general rule of thumb is thin client/the client – works very well, thin client/thick client  - works moderately well and thin client/thin client requires speech recognition in a virtual environment as well.

SPEECH RECOGNITION and ACCURACY

Having a speech recognition system that is high-performance, serves your needs, saves you time and money requires minimal maintenance, nonetheless, requires maintenance – just like your sports car. Just like getting your oil changed on a regular basis, you should also perform your accuracy tuning with your speech recognition system. In Dragon Medical >  Audio you will find these tools. First, get with your Dragon trainer to make sure your voice and microphone settings are maximized; several tweaks are not readily available when you install Dragon right out-of-the-box. Then you would proceed to the "read text for accuracy tuning". However, there are some additional tweaks that your certified Dragon trainer can help you with including the genesis of your user profile.

FILE CLONING vs. INDIVIDUAL PATIENTS

Does this sound familiar? My EMR forces me to "point and click, click, click" resulting in charts starting to all look the same.
• Agreed: E/M coding analyzes the number of CLICKS within various components such as ROS and PMH.
• Agreed: Pay for Performance requires information about diagnoses and various laboratory values.

However, the narrative within the History of Present Illness is less important for E&M Coding or for PQRI.

CONCLUSION: It is important that you treat each individual patient as an INDIVIDUAL patient, thus, speech recognition.

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Here is a link to the current government initiative: CLICK HERE.

SCRIBES vs. SPEECH RECOGNITION

Control, expense, patient/provider rapport? This is a simple one; spending $33,000 for an average scribe’s salary, sacrificing the control you have as a provider over the chart and violating the one-on-one rapport you have worked hard to develop with your patient vs. current speech recognition technology, makes the decision simple - the game changer, however, is to have a technology company like Healthcare Information Technologies, LLC (HIT) tailor your solution so that you have the structured data being placed in your electronic medical records exactly where it needs to be.

EFFICIENCY: SPEECH RECOGNITION vs. TRANSCRIPTION

Simply put, the more efficient that we become, the more easily we will sustain the increasing demands of 1) economy, 2) regulation and 3) population growth. As it has proven to be true in the automobile industry, the same is true "business – wide", the more automation one can apply to a task, the more accurate, faster and efficient the task is performed – enter speech recognition! Transcriptionists are now being reallocated to handle the data input traffic. It's much quicker and efficient for intelligent software to recognize the speech of the author than for an individual to manually determine what was spoken, the meaning and where the text should be placed. There are varieties of “work flow solutions” that can be tailored to accommodate a medical practice. At Healthcare Information Technologies, LLC (HIT) we have made it our business to be Speech Recognition Experts, reflecting directly to our clients efficiency and “bottom line”.

SPEECH RECOGNITION: FRONT END or BACK END

Clarity: There are essentially two workflow solutions, FESR (Front End Speech Recognition and BESR (Back End Speech Recognition) both of which utilize the speech recognition engine of Dragon Medical Practice Edition (DMPE) which has 62 medical vocabularies, is 99% accurate and learns the accents and dialogues of the author. Front-end is where the author dictates live into his microphone and the discrete text goes immediately into the target document whether EMR, Word Document or simply surfing the Web. Back End is where the author dictates into a digital recorder, iPhone or other device, hits send and a discrete text is placed into the target document. Either system can be used, or a combination of the two for even greater efficiency. The end result is that the author is 3 to 5 times faster and more accurate than traditional dictation, handwriting and/or transcription.

Healthcare Consumerism

As the feds push us to become more efficient, at the same time they're cutting reimbursements, the consumers (patients) are becoming more aware of the cost/benefit of engaging the services of different providers. They expect great prices and great service. Whereas this is primarily done through great patient portals, getting information to where it is meaningful for the consumer is oftentimes a challenge. The answer is speech recognition and speech recognition. (1) Speech Recognition to chart the patient's health in real time and (2) Speech Recognition that the provider uses to manage his daily work flow. Our clients are using speech recognition to not only chart the patient but to navigate the web and post meaningful information to the patient portal for each patient. As today's providers work to retain their patient base, patient consumerism is on the rise.

Meaningful Use Vs. Meaningful Information

Providers today are in a juxtaposition as to “pointing & clicking” or “dictating”.  What is the answer ? "Yes" – both! As the provider is reviewing the chart with the patient, scrolling through the screen on his EMR, pointing and clicking, he/she will find it necessary to add the patient's peculiarities and specifics.  This information will have to be shared with others in the healthcare network.  Whereas transcription oftentimes is delayed, inaccurate and inexpensive, the only true answer is "real time input" into their EMR with front end speech recognition.  This is the only way to comply with the government requirements as well as achieve information that the healthcare network can use for great patient care.

EHR 'MEANINGFUL USE' COMPLIANCE

The US Government’s Department of Health and Human Services has been encouraging all health care providers for years to comply with using new technology and techniques to build a better national and worldwide health database. The government’s term ‘meaningful use’ is used to show that a health care company is doing its best to make its EHR more productive. Speech recognition helps to speedily and digitally collect data, thereby keeping facility costs lower and patient care standards higher. The increase in efficiency of adding reports and data into an EHR in a health facility or doctor’s office is one of the reasons that speech recognition software is so heavily relied upon now.

Time delays, expense and HIPAA compliance have made transcription challenging, not to mention complications with outsourcing. Now, with the release of Dragon Medical Practice Edition (DMPE) real-time charting into the EHRs is not only entirely possible, but, increasing at an exponential rate. Although Dragon Medical 10 has been great, Dragon Medical Practice Edition (DMPE) has been completely rewritten from the ground up and boasts a 99% accuracy rate along with being 15% faster than 10. Speed is further increased by the intelligent use of templates – something transcriptionists generally can't do. Please keep in mind, however, having the correct and applicable installation as well as initial training and follow-up training makes all the difference in the world.

Speech Recognition Templates

Simply put, the more automation that one can put into their practice, more accurate and quicker workflow becomes. Of course, greater accuracy leads to greater patient care. Greater patient care leads to improved coding which leads to greater reimbursements. Interested? The use of variable templates in Dragon Medical Practice Edition (DMPE) allows this to happen. Please contact us for the link to our recorded demos. Of course, we take great pride in our custom solutions and customer care.

Dragon Medical & Point of Care

Nothing happens in healthcare until a physician treats a patient and the note is “properly recorded” in the chart. The “life-blood” of this process is the physicians’ “spoken words”. The importance of this ranges from quality of care for the patient and family to payment for services rendered to the provider and clinic, thus insuring the longevity of both the patient and the practice. Dragon Medical Practice Addition is 99% accurate, 15% faster than earlier versions and saves ongoing transcription costs in addition to meeting the requirements of meaningful use II. Please contact us for a free evaluation, consultation and ROI assessment.

Upcoming Events

Webinars: 25 Minutes Speech recognition April 24, 2012, 12:00 PM EDT; 3:00 PM EDT

Please email us directly for an invitation. Upcoming webinars will include: Voice Activated Templating, ICD 10, Diabetic Neuropathy

Speech Recognition… The Way to Go, Now

Speech recognition is an integral part of the future (and the “now”). Historically, best practices call for the medical provider dictating his/her notes, which are then transcribed into the chart. As the cost of transcription has escalated, this service has been outsourced, the results of which have been obvious. Thus, for speed, accuracy and cost saving we have had phenomenal success implementing our speech recognition software. Not only does it pay for itself in one month but also it has proven to increase speed, accuracy and versatility of the “charting provider”. Of course, our familiarity with innumerable EMRs and our onsite training has won us many happy clients.

Our New Year Goals… For You

Wishing all of our loyal clients and followers a Happy and Prosperous New Year we recoup from the holidays, take stock of what we learned last year, and know that 2012 will be incredible. This is “the year” that medical providers must attest that they are on a certified EMR. Given our great success in 2011 let me say that we are here for all of you; ready, willing and able to help you attain your goals. Our tag line “Proof is in the Performance” holds true - a large number of our clients have now received their $18,000 stimulus check. Through our “workflow fine-tuning”, and other tools, most of our clients have also dramatically increased patient volume and, consequently, greatly improved their net operating income – that is always our goal for our clients.