3 ways to capture the patient story as quickly and accurately as possible

It goes without saying that recording patient data accurately is critical.  

Even the smallest error in patient records could lead to devastating outcomes. Not only can healthcare settings suffer legal, financial and reputational damage, but for patients, this could result in incorrect treatment, and have potentially severe effects on their health and wellbeing. 

However, with increased administrative burdens and less time available to spend with patients, ensuring that data is recorded both quickly and accurately is becoming a growing challenge for healthcare professionals.  

These professionals are therefore increasingly on the lookout for the best voice recognition software for medical transcription and other solutions to ensure they are recording data as efficiently as possible.  
 
Here are three ways that you can record patient data in your healthcare setting to achieve exactly that: 

1. Use a Dictaphone/voice recording device 

Perhaps the greatest hindrance on the timely and accurate recording of patient data is the requirement to input the data, often by hand, into the computer system.  
 
Healthcare professionals are acutely aware that spending more time looking at a computer than directly talking to their patients can leave those patients feeling neglected. The impact of this is also more heavily felt due to the above-mentioned lack of time healthcare professionals have with their patients. 

As a result, it is especially difficult for these professionals to strike the right balance of being able to record information accurately and give patients the interaction they need. 

This is where voice recording hardware such as a dictaphone or a smart phone (provided this has been approved as part of your healthcare setting’s BYOD policy) becomes especially useful. With these devices, you can focus wholly on their patients while knowing the data is being recorded with complete accuracy.  

Moreover, this will save you significant amounts of time on paper-based workflows or needing to rely on your memory to make notes following an appointment. 

2. Sync up your voice recording with specialist speech recognition software 

Once you have secured your voice recording hardware, implementing speech recognition software is the next step in quickly and efficiently logging patient data.  

However, be mindful which software you choose for this. The best voice recognition software for medical transcription will always be the one that has been developed specifically for the medical sector, as well as having the ability to detect regional accents. 

This way, you can be confident that the software will recognise and accurately record complex medical terminology, which will significantly reduce the risk of misdiagnoses later down the line. This will also save you the time usually required to scan through documentation to check for inaccuracies. 

Also, be sure that the software you choose is as secure as possible. As an example, T-Pro Dictate uses a secure cloud-based application that provides accessibility and solutions such as encryption to protect patient information, as well as a comprehensive range of appropriate technical safeguards to ensure confidentiality, integrity and security of patient information. 

3. Outsource your transcription to an experienced team 

Transcribing patient data following an appointment can also take up a significant amount of healthcare professionals’ time.  

For those that send their documentation to their healthcare settings’ administrative staff, this may save time in the short term, but can potentially lead to data inaccuracies should the administrator have limited healthcare experience. 

In order to save time and ensure data accuracy, outsourcing the transcription of patient records can provide the optimal solution.  

For example, T-Pro are providers of one of the largest and most experienced transcription services, offering a knowledgeable and efficient team of in-country and global transcriptionists 24/7. In fact, they turn millions of minutes of dictation into clinical documents each year! 
 

Alongside guaranteed turnaround times and the ability to eliminate existing backlogs, the accuracy of these outsourced transcription services means that healthcare professionals can save significant time and feel safe in the knowledge that data will be transcribed as accurately as possible. 

This was very much the case for University Hospital Kerry when they implemented T-Pro’s transcription services. As their CEO Maria Godley stated:  

 
“I’m delighted with the results so far and we have seen some very impressive improvements in the turnaround times for completed documents. The T-Pro platform has also given my team access to comparative quality, efficiency and cost statistics, allowing the hospital to take control of our transcription process.” 

To summarise… 

Finding solutions to record patient data as quickly and accurately as possible can also bring healthcare settings a multitude of other benefits, such as cost reductions, increased productivity, and enhancing the doctor and patient experience.  

Here at T-Pro, we offer one of the best voice recognition software solutions for medical transcription and are particularly proud of how the positive impact this service has made in healthcare settings over the last decade.