"Beyond the obvious benefits of having dictated text immediately available for review, with direct impact on turnaround time, voice recognition software does not take vacations, does not require sick time, and willingly works nights and weekends when required. The economic benefit is substantial..."
Dr. Paul E. Kalish, Medical Director NSLIJHS Laboratories - Glen Cove Hospital Chairman - Department of Pathology
Increasing costs for instruments and supplies, decreasing reimbursements, and shrinking pools of trained employees require laboratory directors to find ways to provide services using fewer resources. With these challenges come new opportunities. As leaders of their organizations, pathologists can provide value by leading efforts to standardize, integrate, and innovate. VoiceOver® is a tool that allows pathologists and laboratories to remain competitive and distinguish themselves from their peers. Here are some ways that implementing VoiceOver® has helped our clients...
Save Money Pathology administrators want to see positive impact from information technology investments as quickly as possible. Voicebrook implementations consistently demonstrate rapid return on investment with significant long-term savings. Our clients typically report ROI within 6-18 months from project inception based upon transcription replacement alone. When secondary expenses, like transcriptionist sick days, lawsuits from transcription error, employee supplies
and office space, health insurance, dictation equipment maintenance contracts and replacement equipment, and productivity increases are factored in, savings become even more pronounced. Our larger clients claim savings of $500,000 to $1,000,000 per year when all of these are factored in.
proven benefits
Save Time Improved personal productivity is a key reason why many of our clients choose to implement VoiceOver®. That's because many of our clients report individual time savings and the ability to take on a greater case load once they switch to VoiceOver®. In most cases, the time savings is attributed to comprehensive template use and real-time report review. VoiceOver® allows users to correct their work in real time, making it easier to spot and correct errors immediately. Once a case is completed, there is no need to pull the report -- or the original materials -- again to review for grammar, spelling, or other mistakes. Referring physicians can have access to immediate results, and consult calls on pending transcription cases will no longer be necessary.
Improve Turnaround Time Turnaround time (TAT) is one of the most noticeable measures of laboratory service and is often used as a key performance indicator of laboratory performance. As a result of using Voiceover's real-time report and review capabilities, many laboratories report average turnaround time savings of up to two days, and individual case turnaround time improvements that may decrease by as much as one week. In a hospital environment, these types of results can dramatically impact patient length of stay, and decrease costs and the quality of outcomes significantly. In a private environment, decreased turnaround time will reflect very positively to referring practices.
Improve Quality Quality can be defined as the ability of a product or service to satisfy the needs and expectations of the customer. In today's competitive laboratory environment, clinicians desire a rapid, reliable and efficient service delivered at low cost. By implementing VoiceOver® you will be enabling your laboratory to meet this demand. Reports will be available almost as fast as they can be dictated, they will be more accurate because pathologists will be reviewing reports while a specimen is still under the microscope, and the cost of dictation will dramatically decrease, allowing laboratories to remain competitive in this era of shrinking reimbursements.
Improve Patient Safety Delivering the right care at the right time in the right setting is the core mission for healthcare providers across the country. Laboratories play a key role in facilitating this process by providing physicians with surgical reports, which are necessary in order to prescribe the right treatment plan for each patient. When transcription errors and backlogs are introduced into the mix, patient safety is jeopardized by potentially introducing unintended errors, and delaying treating physicians from providing care to their patients. VoiceOver® is documented to speed up turnaround time by days, and has been shown to cut reporting errors in half. AT the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, the percentage of cases signed out in one day improved by 89%, even with a 68% increase in case load, and they did this while decreasing the total number of errors by 48% compared to transcription in the previous year.
Enable Complementary Technologies Many laboratories are implementing new technologies like digital imaging and specimen tracking solutions in order to facilitate high quality diagnostics and reporting. This presents problems for pathologists and IT resources, because not all applications are easily integrated into a single pathologist workstation. As Digital Pathology continues to evolve, we see increased acceptance of the multi-display "Pathologist's Cockpit". In this model, coordination of the Pathologist's goals and actions across multiple applications requires additional inter-application coordination, and will present challenges to productivity until integration points are worked through. In addition to traditional reporting automation, VoiceOver® provides inter-application coordination using speech recognition and system integration capabilities. We believe that providing one standardized platform for speech technology input and command and control can be an instrumental "helper technology" in delivering on the promise of Digital Pathology.
Standardize Processes Standardization of processes can improve quality of services, safety, and the interactions between pathology professionals in a laboratory. The selection of the appropriate product or process is an opportunity to implement proven laboratory best practices that improve the quality and flow of information. VoiceOver® is a tool that can drive standardization in a laboratory. Through the use of its templates, enablement of the Pathologist's Cockpit, and custom voice commands and workflow that can enforce laboratory policy, VoiceOver® can be an invaluable tool for laboratories to improve standardization. Voicebrook's clients have used our software to standardize templates and reporting structure across a laboratory, teach residents how to structure a report, implement safety protocols that verify slides, and accession numbers to patient names. By dictating directly into in AP system and seeing the patient name and accession number on the screen prior to report dictation, users eliminate case mismatch issues that occur through disconnected transcription processes. While the benefit is hard to quantify, and often overlooked, its impact on patient safety and quality in a laboratory can be significant.
Leverages AP System Investment and Enhances Functionality Voicebrook has created VoiceOver® Integration Personalities to enhance the functionality and workflow of AP systems. VoiceOver® Integration Personalities can be configured to implement laboratory policy and allow the AP systems to function in a more natural way, streamlining workflow using natural voice commands versus traditional mouse and keyboard interaction. When VoiceOver® is implemented simultaneously with a new AP system, the integration is so comprehensive, that often users are unable to separate what is a VoiceOver® function from what exists within the AP system. This adds up to improved usage of the AP system, and higher satisfaction by pathologists and PA's who use our software.
