Cardiology Transcriptionist- Integrating Transcription With EMR and Speech Recognition Software

The cardiology transcriptionist converts voice file, which contains patient health information, into an electronic file. The file is encrypted and sent back safely to the physician, who then decrypts it back to the original form. The stored information can be accessed, whenever needed during the course of treatment. Transcription process takes time and the turnaround time generally varies from 4 hours to 48 hours depending upon type of medical reports and service of transcription provider.

The emergence of new applications like speech recognition software and Electronic medical record (EMR) has increased the speed and ease with which, the patient health data can be processed and stored in the computer.

Electronic Medical Record

In EMR, during the patient-doctor encounter, the clinical observations of the patient are fed into the computer by selecting the related terms from the pre-structured point-and-click template. The physician enters the appropriate clinical term from the available choices to make complete electronic record of the patient. This record can be accessed or updated by other physician during the course of treatment and thus provides great flexibility in treating the patient. EMR has inbuilt safety system, which provides medication warnings or drug allergy alerts.

One main loophole is that there is no crosschecking mechanism present in EMR, which ensures that no wrong information is entered and carried forward into treatment .This can seriously jeopardize the safety of the patient. Since the information is stored on basis of pre-structured template the output from the template is too canned and loses the individuality.

Speech Recognition Software

Speech recognition software is an excellent tool, which directly converts the spoken words into text on computer screen. Thus a physician can directly speak into the computer and see for him or herself the text on the screen. This saves times as the there is no need to send the file to the transcriptionists and this reduces the turnaround time considerably.

Shortcomings in Speech recognition Software

In spite of latest advancements is this field, the software is not completely accurate. There are errors in it and it requires human intervention to guarantee the accuracy of the final outcome. Further the software requires human training to condition it to the voice pattern and dictation style of the end user.

Cardiology Transcriptionist Bridging the Gap

The above shortcomings can be easily overcome by integrating the transcription process with EMR and speech recognition software. The Cardiology transcriptionist can work in tandem with back-end speech recognition software to edit the errors in report transcribed by the software. The voice file is sent along with electronic file to transcriptionist, who then edits it. The transcribing speed increases considerably, without compromising the accuracy of the report.

The Cardiology transcriptionist also overcomes the shortcomings of EMR. The presence of well trained transcriptionist and team of quality control department guarantees high degree of accuracy of the medical report. A pair of fresh and trained human eyes, ensure that no wrong information is fed in the electronic medical records of the patient. The transcription provides other advantage in form vivid and detailed description of the patient health which is missing in the EMR. This detailed account is necessary where the physician needs in depth knowledge about the past and present medical observations of the patient to arrive at conclusion, especially in critical and difficult cases.

Thus a Cardiology transcriptionist plays a crucial role in integration of transcription process with EMR and speech recognition software to by overriding their shortcomings. It provides the human intelligence, vigilance and instinct to successfully integrate transcription with speech recognition software and EMR.

EMR, speech recognition software and Cardiology transcription can be integrated to increase quality of Cardiac care.

Jason Gaya

Read more on Cardiology transcription at, www.cardioscribes.com

Cardiology Transcription: Overcoming Errors to Increase the Accuracy of Transcribed Report

The cardiac reports of the patients are dictated into the voice recorder by the Cardiologist and sent to the cardiology transcriptionists through internet. The transcriptionists listen to it and type it into computer, to create electronic text files. A poorly recorded dictation, heavy accented voice, background disturbances, loss of concentration, improper knowledge of medical terminology and typing errors are some of the major reasons behind errors in transcribed reports.

A transcribed report having accuracy of more than 98% is accepted as reliable medical document and is used by the physician to treat the patient. The errors are categorized as follows:

• Critical Errors – These are mistakes in Patient ID, omission in dictation or a missing part and misuse of medical word so that it severely compromises the safety of the patient information. A transcription report, which has one or more, such type of errors, is rejected.
• Major errors- The errors like wrong verb usage, spelling mistakes, failure to raise flag for quality audit or misusing the flagging right. A transcribed report having three or more such types of errors is rejected.
• Minor errors- The grammar or format mistakes or any other errors, which have very less impact on the safety or the integrity of the medical report, fall under this category. A transcription report, which has nine or more such type of errors, is rejected.

A higher frequency of errors in the Cardiology transcription report points towards poor quality standards of the transcription company and casts a bad impression about the professional competence of the service provider. The time, money and manpower spent towards correcting these errors increase the production cost. The turnaround time also increases and prevents in timely delivery of treatment to the patients.

Streamlining the Transcription process

A detailed analysis of the Cardiology transcription process will help to identify bottlenecks, which induce errors in the final outcome. Mentioned below is the some important quality enhancing steps, which increase the accuracy of the transcription report, considerably.

• Provide intensive training to cardiology transcriptionists.
• Assign a small group of cardiology transcribers to a particular dictator so that voice pattern and dictation style can be familiarized.
• Integrate Speech recognition software with transcriptionists. The software will speed up process, while the transcribers will edit errors in the report. This will reduce fatigue on cardiologist trancriptionists and thus minimize errors.
• The MT should update their knowledge of medical terminology, regularly.
• The quality control department should work in tandem with transcribers and provide a complete feedback about the quality of transcribed reports. The audit department should help cardiology transcriptionists to identify their weakness and provide them sufficient training to increase the accuracy of the report. This will surely raise the quality standards of the final output.
• Sharpen listening skills of the transcribers and editing skills of proofreaders or editors through in house training to filter out the errors.

The accuracy of the cardiology transcription report is of paramount importance because the physician depends on it, to treat the patients. Any error, carried forward, can alter the outcome of the treatment and seriously undermine the health of the patient.

To eliminate the transcription error it is necessary to understand its source and streamline the process accordingly.

Jason Gaya

Read more on Cardiology Transcription at, www.cardioscribes.com