| Maine Medical Center |
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| Improving Efficiency
in the Face of Rising Transcription Demands |
Challenge
Maine Medical Center is a 606-bed teaching hospital serving southern
and central Maine and a major referral center for northern New England.
It is also the largest hospital in the state. Several years ago,
due to growing transcription demand across medical groups in its
multi-location campus, the hospital found that its existing manual
transcription system was strained. Staffing issues, recruitment
challenges, and rising labor costs for Medical Transcriptionists
(MTs) were making it more and more difficult for Maine Medical's
HIM Department to handle the increasing quantities of transcription
while controlling costs.
"As volume grew, I needed to find a way to increase the productivity
of our transcription process," stated John Avedian, HIM Director
at Maine Medical Center. "I wanted a technology solution that would
meet our enterprise-wide needs."
Solution
In 2000, Maine Medical Center implemented the EditScript solution
that turns clinicians' speech into fully formatted draft documents.
The hospital's 26-person MT staff edits the documents with overflow
editing handled by an outsourced transcription company. As editors,
MTs typically complete a transcription twice as fast as they would
have typed it from scratch. This productivity increase helped
Maine Medical Center handle the additional transcription volume
and save costs, with the quality of documents as good as or better
than if they had been typed.
What's more, the hospital has achieved these results without
interfering with clinicians' workflow. Jefferson Howe, Transcription
Manager commented, "Maine Medical Center clinicians did not have
to adjust their speaking patterns or explicitly train the software
in order to use it."
Today, the EditScript solution from eScription is processing dictations
from more than 540 physicians at Maine Medical Center. The solution
has organization-wide application, and supports numerous specialties
and document types. "We are processing more than 40 work types,
ranging from Psychiatric Discharge Summaries to Operative Notes
to Outpatient Reports," commented HIM Director, John Avedian. "Clinicians'
dictations from 11 business units including, Maine Medical Center
Hospital, the Outpatient Clinic, Pain Care Center, and Radiation
Oncology, among others, are being processed through our new system."
In-house and remote MTs are trained on the EditScript Transcriptionist
Tools, which provide an MT interface based on Microsoft Word. A
variety of productivity features such as shortcut keys and audio
controls facilitate the editing process. "The system is easy
to use, functional in design, and requires relatively little training
before an employee is productive," said Jefferson Howe, who
is also President of the American Association for Medical Transcription
(AAMT).
The flexible Document Management and Distribution capabilities
within EditScript enable faster response times when discharging
or transferring patients and free up Transcription Coordinators
from overseeing routine distribution requests. For example, records
are now automatically faxed to out of state clinicians, or printed
directly to the patient's floor, without manual intervention. Of
the 1,000 faxes that were sent daily through the previous system,
as many as 200-300 would result in errors and have to be resent.
With EditScript, the reliability of fax distribution has improved
by 90 percent.
The EditScript solution is also dynamically integrated with Maine
Medical Center's existing medical information systems through secure,
standards-based interfaces. "The team was very responsive to our
requests. They understand the hospital environment and worked with
us as partners to reach our goals." said John Avedian.
An eScription installation team helped Maine Medical 'hit the ground
running' by defining interfaces and document distribution rules,
and by addressing the hospital's formatting requirements right from
the start. eScription also provided on-site training for MTs to
accelerate the productivity gains they could achieve.
Results
Within three months, Maine Medical Center began to benefit from
the eScription implementation. "We have experienced double the productivity
compared to regular transcription modalities," stated Jefferson
Howe, Transcription Manager and President, AAMT.
CIO Jerry Edson commented, "The economic advantages are compelling.
The use of eScription technology to streamline medical record creation
and distribution both saves administrative costs and accelerates
our billing process, enabling our organization to operate efficiently
and achieve our financial goals."
Today at Maine Medical Center:
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Many individual MTs have achieved
a doubling of productivity, with productivity up overall by
75%. |
|
Cost savings realized are approximately
$250,000 per year. |
|
The transcription department's Incentive
Pay Program reflects a 93% increase in target production. Current
thresholds are 170 lines per hour (straight transcription) and
330 lines per hour (editing). |
|
Backlog management is much improved.
An automated reporting feature indicates when outsourced MTs
should be used. |
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Quality of transcribed reports is
enhanced, as documented through an audit process. 90% fewer
faxes fail. |
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Transcriptionists are happier than
ever. In a survey, the majority of respondents said that they
would never want to go back to 'the old way.' |
Maine Medical Center has a highly efficient, enterprise-wide solution
for its transcription demand and all constituencies are happy. Learn
more about the complete EditScript solution that is delivering real
results to Maine Medical Center in our Products
section.
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