Primary Care News

Waterloo Medical Group saves £15,000 with Nuance medical speech recognition

Nuance Communications announced that Waterloo Medical Group has saved £15,000 in 12 months by speeding up clinical document turnaround times and boosting accuracy with medical speech to text software.

Deploying Nuance Dragon Medical has enabled the team to process clinical documents quickly and accurately without the need to outsource transcriptions or hire additional secretarial support. The solution has relieved mounting pressure caused by rising patient numbers across the entire practice, reducing stress for the GP surgery team as well as delivering significant cost savings.

The Dragon Medical speech to text software, which some of the practice doctors had used before, allows the team to transcribe letters in record speed. This has cut turnaround times down from up to 9 days to under 72 hours. Crucially this healthcare specialised speech recognition solution had no problem coping with a broad range of accents across the practice as well as the use of complex medical terminology.

Practice Manager Chris Watson explains, “Stress levels have been reduced, we’ve made excellent cost savings, we’re better able to cope with rising patient numbers, letter turnaround times are down, and, more than anything, our medical documentation is more complete and accurate than before.”

Simon Wallace, Chief Clinical Information Officer at Nuance Communications continues, “I think one of the most important benefits for this practice is that the team sees a significant improvement in their work life balance. Doctors accept that general practice are stressful environments because of the workload. But, by adopting speech recognition technology, Waterloo Medical Group has shown that it is a progressive, forward thinking practice that can control that and deliver a good work-life balance back to its staff for a relatively small investment.”