Smartphones Replace Medical Transcriptionists
By
John Pulley
Nebraska clinic was able to go from 25 transcriptionists to six.
Smartphones equipped with mobile medical dictation apps are replacing handheld tape recorders and tablet computers -- at least for doctors at one medical clinic in Nebraska.
Smartphone-based voice-recognition technology allowed the 30 physicians at the Kearney Clinic, in central Nebraska, to cut the number of transcriptionists from 25 to just six, while quadrupling physician productivity, the clinic’s network administrator, Steve Jensen, says in a July 9 article in mHIMSS.
"Doctors are trained in medical school to dictate – that's what they're used to," Jensen says. "Our doctors want to dictate, and they don't want to be tied down to a tablet."
Most of the clinic’s physicians now dictate their notes on an iPhone 4 that uses speech-dictation technology from Nuance.
"Dictation is more personal, and it allows [the physician] to enter notes in front of the patient. There's no miscommunication," Jensen told mHIMSS editor Eric Wicklund. "Mobile technology … helps us do the job we're capable of doing."
The doctors’ notes also are available more quickly than when they had to wait for transcription, Jensen said.
He added that the speech-recognition technology will play a role as the clinic installs a new electronic medical record system and becomes a patient-centered medical home.
mHIMSS reports on mobile-health technology for the Chicago-based Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society.