Time, Money, and Lives Blog

Healthcare organizations around the world have discovered the benefits of "big data" thanks to the enormous amounts of data available from electronic health records (EHRs). Up to now, though, the data have been largely unstructured, especially in Anatomic Pathology. This has meant that it is not always easy to mine the data for effective analysis, but that is changing. Many organizations are moving towards synoptic reporting and structured data capture. The difference between the two is subtle, but important. Synoptic reports are formatted for easy consumption by the human eye while structured data are formatted to be sorted, stored, and analyzed by computers.

The College of American Pathologists (CAP) is continuously improving its protocols, and it can be a challenge for Pathology departments to maintain their electronic versions and keep pace with the changes. On its website, CAP offers resources and links to partners who can help accredited laboratories stay up to date with the latest versions of the checklists

Have you ever wondered why your computer starts to get sluggish? Opening your email is slow, news articles take FOREVER to download, and nothing seems to be working right. Well, your computer has probably been up too long. Calling IT or support will tell you to restart it, but why? Like a person, if you leave a computer up for too long without restarting, it just exhausts itself. Too many activities and programs are running, and the computer cannot keep up. "But how did IT know my computer had been up for so long?" You wonder, "Where are they finding a list of these activities?" The answer is the Task Manager, and understanding how to use it can actually empower you to take control of your own troubleshooting!

Back in December, Voicebrook employees from around the country came together for our annual company meeting. The theme was communication, and we were each challenged to think about how we can improve our communications with each other and with our clients. While researching the topic, I found that many tools for effective communication also apply to dictation. If you think about it, talking to a computer really doesn't differ much from talking to a person.

Now that the holidays are over, it's time to get back to work dictating cases. You say, "Surgical, one zero," accession number S-18-00010 opens up, and it's business as usual.  Like many programs, VoiceOver adapts to the new year, so going forward with new cases won't require any additional steps. If, however, you want to open and dictate a case from 2017, you will need to issue a different command.

This brief blog explains how these commands work and what you need to say in order to open up the correct accession number for the correct year.