Nuance Communications, Inc. today announced that University of California, San Diego Medical Center (UCSD Medical Center) selected Dragon Medical for use at multiple facilities to expand physicians’ options for documenting electronic health records (EHRs) to include real-time speech recognition. With Dragon Medical, physicians can document patient encounters via their voice for editing in real-time, without the need for medical transcription or reliance on typing and mouse navigation to complete an EHR.
“While EHRs are at the forefront of the healthcare information technology agenda, adoption is lagging with less than two percent of U.S. hospitals having fully switched to EHRs”
A speech-enabled EHR is one component of UCSD Medical Center’s highly developed technology infrastructure of clinical systems. Last year, UCSD Medical Center was among the nation’s Most Wired hospitals for the third consecutive year, according to Hospitals & Health Networks. In fact, an analysis of data from Hospital & Health Networks’ 2008 Most Wired Survey and Benchmarking Study found evidence that information technology makes a difference in patient experience and satisfaction, as well as quality of care.
“We selected Dragon Medical as a tool for our physicians as they work within our EHR system. At UCSD Medical Center, speech recognition has become an important component of our EHR implementation, allowing doctors to accurately capture the patient encounter information,” said Ed Babakanian, CIO, UCSD Medical Center. “Speech recognition has helped physicians get information online faster, which has shown benefits from a productivity perspective and in terms of communication timeliness, which in turn has also helped improve the delivery and quality of patient care.”
UCSD Medical Center has been utilizing Dragon Medical for three years. Today, approximately 170 physicians are utilizing Nuance’s speech recognition technology and many more are in the process of being trained to use the software. By utilizing Dragon Medical alongside its Epic EHR system, UCSD Medical Center has seen a noticeable improvement in provider efficiency, and with reduced reliance on medical transcription, UCSD expects significant, ongoing cost savings.
With more than 100,000 physicians now using Dragon Medical to dictate patient information into EHRs, speech recognition is increasingly recognized as an essential component to successful EHR rollout. As the Health and Human Services Department works to define “meaningful use” of an EHR, Nuance believes that speech recognition software can help physicians and organizations move toward complying with what will ultimately be considered “meaningful” EHR use, by ensuring that clinicians actually utilize the EHR without having to take on the burden of documentation via keyboard. Speech-supported EHRs have been proven to make clinicians up to 25 percent more efficient than those using non-speech-enabled EHRs.
In addition to a streamlined workflow, speech recognition helps to ensure that the physician narrative is not lost during the documentation process, supporting improved ongoing patient care through caregiver access to readily available high quality and detailed medical reports. According to a survey completed by 1,255 physicians who have adopted Nuance’s Dragon Medical, 69 percent said it made their EHR faster and easier to use, 83 percent said that it improved the quality of their electronic patient notes and 81 percent said that it significantly reduced transcription spending.
“While EHRs are at the forefront of the healthcare information technology agenda, adoption is lagging with less than two percent of U.S. hospitals having fully switched to EHRs,” said John Shagoury, president, Nuance Healthcare. “UCSD Medical Center is ahead of the curve with its use of EHRs. By providing physicians with multiple documentation option, including speech recognition within the EHR system, the facility is positioned for increased physician utilization of the technology, as well as improved provider efficiency and more complete clinical documentation.”
