Dictation Services Overview
Dictation services offer physicians and other healthcare providers at least four inter-related benefits:
- Higher revenues
- Increased patient satisfaction
- Increased physician satisfaction
- Improved patient record quality
However, many offices, clinics, and hospitals do not see past the costs of dictation services, particularly the cost of transcription.
As with clerical support staff, dictation services free up the health care provider so that he or she can focus on what they are trained to do: treat patients. That’s why it is helpful see this service as an investment in the clinician’s time rather than look at dictation services as a clerical “cost.” Dictation services make clinicians more productive, which in turn increases patient capacity and billings. The additional revenue generated by freeing up a clinician’s time easily outstrips any costs associated with dictation services.
How Dictation Services Increase Revenues Through Improved Office Efficiencies
What is the physician’s job?
It’s a fairly simple question with a seemingly simple answer: to see and treat patients. However, if you follow a clinician around for a day, it quickly becomes obvious that there is more to it than that – including a number of speed bumps in patient care.
The most obvious is for those clinicians who manage their own electronic medical records (EMRs). If you were able to watch those patient/physician interactions, you’d see that the doctor spends much of the time – often most of the time – staring at the computer, filling in check boxes, and typing in notes. Likely there will be little eye contact.
But if you were to watch a physician who dictates notes rather than types into a computer, you’d see more eye contact, a richer interaction, and better communication. You might even notice the clinician picking up on things the patient is saying more often than the clinician who is staring at a screen. The physician who dictates notes is much more engaged with the patient and much less distracted with documenting the encounter. Not only that, patient encounters are shorter – especially when you factor in the amount of time physicians and clinicians spend updating EMRs after the patient leaves.
Of course, documenting patient encounters is vitally important. But there are different ways of doing it. It is incumbent on physicians and clinicians to decide what method is best for them – and their patients – to ensure the best possible patient care.
Dictation services provide at least four major and related benefits to the physician, to the patient, and to the organization’s bottom line:
- Higher revenues through more patients and billings
- Improved patient satisfaction through more engaged interactions
- Improved clinician satisfaction through reduced workload
- Improved patient record quality
1. The Largest Impact of Dictation Services: Higher Revenues
Perhaps the most profound benefit of dictation services is that they lead to more patient billings, and therefore increased revenues for the office, clinic, and hospital. There are upfront costs including most notably transcription costs. These costs are more of an investment though – an investment in the physician’s time – and are recouped many times over in the form of more patients and their associated billings.
2. Improved Patient Satisfaction
Dictation services can help clinicians provide a higher standard of patient care. Not only is this a goal in itself, but that also helps improve patient satisfaction. And, as outlined above, dictating notes instead of hunting and pecking on a computer keyboard means that patients feel more engaged. Increased patient satisfaction is also connected to higher billings – net margins of those providing “superior” patient experiences that are 50 percent higher than those providing “average” experiences.
3. Improved Clinician Satisfaction
For most clinicians, clerical work including updating EMRs is a chore. Many feel burned out and indeed many clinicians are retiring or leaving their practices due to overwhelming workloads. Dictation services help take away much of that workload and the stress that goes along with it.
Dictation services can also directly help you recoup all reimbursements owing to you. Often, clinicians are not trained properly on the systems and/or do not fully appreciate how important mission-critical things such as structured data are to patient care – and your bottom line. Professional documentation experts including dictation service companies provide fuller, more accurate patient record notes for better billing practices.
4. Improved Patient Record Quality
To build on the point above, dictation services improve the overall quality of the patient record, which of course has many benefits. “Clinical documentation improvement” or CDI emphasizes accurate, high-quality documentation because it increases communication, leads to more accurate data at the patient and macro levels, and improves patient care. It also helps ensure proper reimbursement so that the office, clinic, or hospital receives maximum compensation, boosting your bottom line again.
The Risks of Voice Recognition Software vs. Real, Trained Medical Transcriptionists
Many offices, clinics, and hospitals try to cut corners by using voice recognition software instead of trained medical transcriptionists. However, the risks are so great that many find it’s not worth additional clinician work, potential lawsuits, and lack of oversight.
For example, one study found that in a random survey of medical records, the error rate was 7.4%. That translates to an exponentially lower accuracy rate than the 98% benchmark trained medical transcriptionists uphold. Not only does this mean the clinician spends more time than necessary correcting these errors, voice recognition has increased patient risk. “The use of voice or speech recognition technology (SRT) for health care documentation has put patients at risk for injury and death,” opens a Joint Commission safety bulletin.
On the other hand, contracting dictation services to trained medical transcriptionists actually decreases patient risk in one key way. Medical transcriptionists provide another set of professional eyes on your documentation. Often, they catch possible dosage errors, medication errors, and other errors in the dictation that may have slipped by unnoticed. That’s a key benefit that voice recognition software most certainly cannot do.
Find Out How iMedat’s Dictation Services Can Help You
Medical documentation can be a complex task – no two organizations do it in exactly the same way. Even clinicians within the same office have different preferences. That’s why a “one size fits all” approach to dictation services does not work.
iMedat on the other hand can tailor a suite of dictation services to meet your needs, right down to personal clinician preferences. Our trained medical transcriptionists can handle as much or as little of the documentation process as you need. All completed transcripts will be tagged and ready for review before adding the notes seamlessly to each patient’s EMR. We provide a smooth, seamless dictation service that you and your clinicians can rely upon. Plus, with fast turnaround and outstanding customer service, it’s easy to see why clients across the United States turn to iMedat as their dictation services provider.
Find out how our dictation services can help you. Contact us through our email form or call us right now at: 888-779-5888