Cutting edge technology transforms efficiency at busy GP practice
Ellesmere Medical Practice has improved efficiency and service for thousands of patients in rural Shropshire, by recently introducing a digital dictation solution alongside voice recognition technology. The upgrade, which creates an instant voice-to-text document, was achieved in collaboration with speech processing specialists SpeechWrite Digital.
Switch from Analogue to Digital
Staff have always relied on the traditional dictation process of a doctor dictating notes and physically handing mini-cassette tapes to administrative staff for audio transcription. This was becoming increasingly impractical, with GPs engaged in back-to-back appointments and their time was at a premium. SpeechWrite deployed three tiers of technology at the practice – Philips SpeechWrite Pro, Dragon Medical and SpeechMike USB digital recorders.
SpeechWrite Voice Recognition
SpeechWrite Voice is designed specifically for healthcare, so it recognises clinical terminology verbally. The practice can also now route, list and receive dictation tasks for audio transcription at the touch of a button and doctors can even route a dictation during a patient consultation. This enables the secretarial team to receive a steady stream of new jobs, which are formatted and archived in a Microsoft ‘Outlook’ style, while also seeing recording length, the author and the priority settings.
Jenny Davies, Practice Manager for Ellesmere Medical Practice, commented:
“The decision to adopt voice recognitionwas simply an operational one. The surgery wanted to improve its administrative practices in order to better meet our patients’ needs. As voice recognition enabled our four GPs to create typed text instantly, in both a correspondence format and within EMIS, this significantly maximised our time efficiency and took pressure off our clerical staff.”
