Dudley rolls out digital dictation

The Dudley Group of Hospitals NHS Trust is to deploy WinScribe digital dictation across the trust in a bid to reduce document turnaround times and improve efficiencies.

Working with healthcare digital dictation and speech recognition solutions specialists SRC, over 350 users at the trust will be given the new equipment and full training before the end of the year, following a successful pilot in the pathology department.

Isobel Rees, the trust’s operational project manager said: “The SRC pilot has shown that the new dictation system provides the flexibility to monitor workloads and where appropriate, administrators can divert work to other areas to maximise staff efficiencies. The solution also gives us the opportunity to respond to GPs in a more timely manner by improving efficiencies.”

A key aim for Dudley is to reduce document turnaround times from days to hours, a problem they are keen to tackle.

Rees added: “Previously consultants physically handed tapes to secretaries for transcription. This meant urgent dictations could be delayed in the system. With the new solution, dictation is automatically routed according to priority as soon as consultants dock their dictation devices”.

The WinScribe system has been configured by SRC to integrate with the trust’s Oasis patient administration system, from Capula Healthcare.

Through the integration, patient’s details will be automatically inserted into customised Microsoft Word templates simply by consultants scanning patient IDs using barcode readers on their Philips portable dictation devices.

SRC says that the PAS integration will not only speed up work for consultants and secretaries but also remove potentially error prone manual processes.

Chris Hart, CEO of SRC said: “The solution at the Dudley Group of Hospitals will provide both increased flexibility and major efficiency gains. The SRC WinScribe digital dictation solution provides the trust with a platform to which additional capabilities can be seamlessly added.

“Already integrated speech recognition is being trialled in the pathology department, and this has the potential to provide further efficiencies in the document creation process. We look forward to working closely with the Dudley Group of Hospitals on this key project.”

In addition to the Dudley Group of Hospitals, the SRC WinScribe solution has been rolled out by numerous other NHS Trusts, including Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals, Chesterfield Royal Hospital, East Sussex Hospitals, Poole Hospital, Homerton University Hospital, The Hammersmith Hospitals and Royal West Sussex Hospitals.

Rees says their experience has helped the successful pilot go smoothly and led to staff asking for the system themselves.

“The SRC project management, training and support services certainly helped minimise disruption during the pilot phase, with the system being well received by consultants, secretaries and administrators,” she said.

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