Healthcare Professions Using Voice To Text

Medical voice transcription services are one of the best ways to produce clinical notes and documents efficiently and effectively, without compromising accuracy. With medical dictation software, you can instantly transcribe patient information, word for word, and properly represent the patient experience. In turn, you can have increased patient satisfaction, as well as elevated productivity and growth within your practice. Implementing the right medical voice-to-text software can also allow you to save time and costs, meaning you can allocate your resources to develop what truly matters. You can also ensure a higher acceptance rate of reimbursements, with voice recognition technology providing more accurate information to be used for medical billing and coding processes. It’s a surefire way to invest in the quality of your business, and allows you to forge strong patient connections that work towards prioritizing their needs.

What did healthcare professionals use before speech to text?

Prior to speech-to-text medical transcription services, most healthcare professions used electronic health records. Using computers, electronic health records require entering information under fields, often riddled with checkboxes, and each patient visit is documented regularly. This can often lead to additional hours spent manually documenting patient information, and despite being electronic, it can take up significant hours as pen and paper documents do. Before medical speech recognition software, many businesses also hired transcriptionists to manually medically dictate sessions. While this can work towards reducing the time spent by practitioners recording medical information, it still requires outsourcing costs to hire staff who are capable of transcribing. This is time-consuming, and can also drain business costs, which is not ideal for seamless operations. This is where speech-to-text transcription services come in, as they provide an efficient way to overcome these obstacles.

When it comes to speech recognition software, there are two types commonly used. They can be utilized separately or together in both mobile and web platforms, with these being back-end speech recognition, and front-end speech recognition. 

• Back-end speech recognition - After words are spoken, they are recorded digitally and then translated into text. The speech recognition software then sends a draft document, along with the voice recording for proofreading, to either a medical transcriptionist or doctor for review. This is a very popular method due to the manual proofread, edit, and review process, which many practitioners prefer due to their reliability. It can be easier for these documents to draw up EHR records and clinical notes. ‍
• Front-end speech recognition - With this type of software, spoken words are translated into text in real-time, meaning you don’t have to spend additional time dictating manually. This often saves costs as it eliminates the need for medical transcriptionists, however, this method may bring about more errors. These transcripts often need to be corrected after they are generated, so various practitioners prefer them for taking personal notes that aren’t included in medical records, or for drafting short medical reports.

Speech-to-text software has revolutionized the healthcare space and how healthcare providers deliver care to their clients. It eliminates the tiresome process of writing notes by hand, as well as removing hours spent manually reviewing and editing clinical notes to correct human errors. Medical transcriptionists are no longer needed, and with highly integrated platforms and workflows, the text can be easily injected into EHR systems, which saves both time and money for healthcare practices. 

Linking the transcription software with an extensive medical terminology library also means that your terms can be easily recognized by the program and you can relax knowing there is minimal risk of misinterpreted information. Doing so increases the accuracy of your clinical notes, and supports easier navigation of EHR. Especially with voice-activated shortcuts, you can cut large amounts of time producing clinical notes, and spend more time on developing and investing in other business processes. This not only improves the quality of life, and smoothens the day-to-day operations for healthcare practitioners, but practices can also save many hours per day and increase both revenue and patient volume. 
Speech-to-text tools are increasingly improving with machine iterative learning, meaning that accuracy will only ever get better. Currently, the average word error rates are less than 6%, and recognition rates are as high as 150 words per minute, which is much faster than the average typing rate. Further improvements will also only see these rates increase. This is great for medical billing and coding processes, who use clinical notes as the basis for reimbursement. More accurate transcripts can result in more accurate billing services, so practices can see that they are efficiently and appropriately reimbursed for the right use of equipment. All in all, speech transcription services and private practice management software can boost the effectiveness of healthcare business operations, and ensure that patient needs can be understood, prioritized, and treated, all whilst time and money costs are saved to inject value elsewhere.

In the healthcare space, speech-to-text software is quickly being integrated into most practices, and with advancements in artificial intelligence, this trend is only expected to increase. With natural language processing developments, healthcare speech recognition is also becoming much more accurate in reducing word error rates, as well as improving recognition rates of medical terminology. With rapid developments that can also cut time and money costs, it’s no secret that voice recognition technology is expected to grow exponentially. It is an excellent way to prioritize patient needs, and ensure that the patient experience is properly captured and understood, with medical practitioners able to strengthen relationships with clients and deliver treatment that acknowledges all their healthcare concerns. It is undoubtedly the way of the future when it comes to healthcare, and to drive your business towards success, you should consider implementing its use today. 

Further reading:

• Voice To Text Technologies Shape The Future Of Electronic Medical Records
• The advances of electronic health records