Troubleshooting issues with medical dictation

What is medical dictation?

Medical dictation involves the use of speech-to-text technology to transcribe medical information during sessions with practitioners and patients. With medical dictation software to transcribe notes instantly, you can ensure that you capture all essential patient information, and with voice recognition software, you can improve clinical outcomes. It is an excellent way to deliver high-quality healthcare solutions to patients, and makes certain that your medical notes more accurately represent health diagnoses, treatments, and care. To drive your business to success, medical dictation is sure to support growth and productivity within your business. 

The big benefits of medical transcription services

There are various advantages to medical transcription services, and making use of these will greatly boost the quality of your business. Besides the obvious time-saver, you may be surprised to discover that medical voice recognition software offers a variety of other benefits for your clinic!

1. Higher accuracy - Manual medical transcription can be taxing, as you have to have the medical expertise, knowledge, and technical awareness, in addition to fast typing skills and good grammar. But don’t fear, as medical dictation can easily overcome this with the help of extensive medical terminology libraries; allowing you to have up to 90% more accurate notes. Phew!
2. Greater accessibility - Medical transcription services provide a way for all patients, healthcare members, and close contacts to be able to view and assess the information. Sometimes it can be difficult to understand all the medical jargon, and transcription services allow you to have easy digital sharing, with concise language. 
3. Free up staff - Time is precious in the healthcare industry, and any opportunity to alleviate temporal restraints is a good one. Medical transcription is perfect for saving time, as it can cut typing and reviewing time, with everything done for you!

Common problems faced in medical transcription

Before you embark on your journey with medical transcription, it is important that you take note of what to avoid. There are common problems that occur within medical transcription services, and learning what they are can help you gain a competitive advantage over other businesses. Your patients will come to appreciate the efforts taken towards ensuring a high standard and coordination of care across practices, and the precautions in place will help protect and secure information. 

1. Technology mistakes - Even advanced machines are prone to mistakes! Speech-to-text software is often supported by machine learning processes, meaning that they adapt and learn from the input you give. Naturally, it may not always be accurate, and so you need to ensure that you have reviewing and editing checks in place to minimize errors. 
2. Lack of double-checking - As part of the editing process, you need to ensure that you double-check all information. Particularly, you need to assess and evaluate medical dosage prescriptions. Names that sound or are spelled similarly can be mistranscribed, which can potentially be detrimental to a patient’s medical record and treatment. Double-checking is a must-do, and to avoid costly mistakes, it is best to closely evaluate information. 
3. Unlinked data - It is important that speech-to-text tools are linked to a medical database to ensure medical terminology is appropriately used, and that patient details can be linked to the notes. A mix-up can be costly, and a lot of time will be needed to accommodate for your mistakes. As a result, it’s best to link up information and data across technology services to avoid this. 

Troubleshooting common medical dictation problems

There are various practices you can incorporate into your healthcare practice to ensure that your medical dictation services are up to date, and can handle any problems that may arise. It is important that you consider these to ensure that you are prioritizing patient needs and health, and representing medical issues accurately. Doing so will elevate the quality of your practice, and provide accurate details that will also result in correct reimbursement. 

1. Dictate clearly - It is important that you speak clearly to ensure that the speech-to-text tool can pick up essential information in order to properly transcribe. You may be surprised to find that many practitioners eat, talk, mumble and yawn when dictating medical details! Not only is this incredibly difficult for the software to understand, but it can lead to misdiagnosis in severe cases. Make sure that you enunciate your phrases with the right pauses, and that you pronounce words with a full tone. 
2. Find a quiet place - Background noise can often distract speech-to-text transcription tools, and can contaminate the recording with inaccurate information. Minimizing background noise can be an easy fix to ensure that voice recognition software can pick up all specific terms and notes. It’s always good practice to have soundproofing, as well as checks in place to ensure that only authorized and important personnel can be in the room. 
3. Only say what you know - Because medical dictation software records everything you say, including every ‘um’ and ‘uh’; it’s important that you only say what you have medically verified. Misdiagnosis and incorrect dosages could prove incredibly detrimental, and in some cases, fatal. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that you only say what you are certain of!
4. Avoid blanks - Make sure that you don’t have obvious blanks in your notes, as this can cause confusion and delay on the medical billing and coding end. Your clinical notes and documents are often used as evidence for patient health verification, and this can cause lengthy delays for reimbursement purposes.
5. Never use abbreviations - Don’t state abbreviations unless you explain what it is for, as this can cause confusion and increase the likelihood of misconstrued information. Abbreviations can be specific to certain facilities and healthcare businesses, so it is best to stick to universal ones, or avoid them completely.

The future of smart medical dictation

Medical dictation services are perfect to boost the quality and care of your service, and incorporating its use will allow you to ensure accuracy across your notes, and improve the quality of care. Doing so can bring about more precise diagnoses and treatments, as well as foster strong connections, saving you both time and money. With advanced software platforms such as Carepatron, you can use medical transcription technology to capture all client details, as well as access other features at free and paid price points. Connecting to a medical terminology library, and using artificial intelligence, you can ensure that you have a highly-integrated workspace that seamlessly incorporates clinical documents and notes. It’s a win-win to use medical dictation services, and will almost certainly drive your business to success when harnessed well.  

Further reading:

• Analysis of Errors in Dictated Clinical Documents Assisted by Speech Recognition Software and Professional Transcriptionists
• USD 23 03 Bn growth in Medical Transcription Market