London, UK – July 24th 2018 – Nuance Communications today announces that Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust has deployed Dragon Medical Network Edition to relieve clinicians’ growing administrative burden and support the mobility of its healthcare workforce out and about in the community.
The deployment – following the Trust being granted Global Digital Exemplar (GDE) funding to invest in digital and technology investments – aims to improve working practices for staff and front-line care for patients. The roll-out of the technology will act as a tool to reduce clinical documentation workloads, support remote working, eliminate the backlog of reporting associated with detailed patient records and replace legacy, analogue dictation workflows to free up healthcare employees to focus on patient care.
Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust is the main provider of community and mental health services across the area, employing over 3,500 staff, with around 26,000 recorded patient contacts every week. The community and mental health team - including pediatricians, mental health nurses and other allied health professionals (AHPs) - were the most hindered by the greatest burden of paperwork and backlog of clinical administration.
The sheer volume of clinical documentation was heavily impacting employees’ working hours and work-life balance. For example, Karen Edwards, Occupational Therapist (OT) at Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust says: “The mountain of admin became oppressive to the point I just didn’t want to do the job anymore. Then we deployed Dragon Medical speech recognition and I caught up with a backlog of two years’ worth of clinical records in just three weeks.”
David Brown, IT director at Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust, was the driving force behind the Trust’s successful GDE funding application. “The Dragon Medical deployment has marked many positive improvements for our clinicians, including significantly enhancing workforce productivity and mobility.
“The move to clinical speech recognition has transformed our clinical documentation strategy – freeing up clinicians and even providing secure access to patient records on the go. We hope that other Trusts can learn from this process, ensuring patients and staff alike can benefit from more timely, accurate and efficient patient records.”
A previous study commissioned by Nuance - analysing the impact of the deployment of speech recognition within the Emergency Department (ED) at South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust - found similar positive outcomes as a result of the deployment of speech recognition technology. The study found the average time saved using speech recognition, versus typing, was almost three minutes per patient. Extrapolating this average time saving per annum results in the equivalent of gaining almost two full-time ED clinicians.
Nine in 10 (86%) clinicians involved in the deployment at South Tees also agreed that speech recognition enabled more accurate and complete patient notes – with most (67%) clinicians also believing patients had no concerns with their use of the technology.
Dr Simon Wallace, Chief Clinical Information Officer, Nuance, said: “Against a multitude of challenges – from budget constraints to an aging population – the NHS’ dedicated healthcare professionals work to deliver world-class patient services.
“However, our health system still needs to improve clinical documentation processes to underpin better patient care – an example set by Worcester with this latest announcement. Digital clinical documentation is vitally important in tracking any patient’s journey, but more patients means more patient records. Intelligent systems that help clinicians naturally document care - so they can focus on patients - are essential to optimise clinical and financial outcomes and are set to make significant impact in the industry.”
Nuance’s engagement with Worcester does not end with the roll out of technology. Nuance Customer Success Organisation (CSO) will provide ongoing support and counsel, ensuring the Trust continues to harness the technology to its full potential.
Please click here to see the Worcester video testimonial.
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About Global Digital Exemplar
Worcester is also one of seven mental health trusts chosen as a Global Digital Exemplar (GDE); NHS England’s flagship digital initiative, prioritising funding for the most digitally advanced trusts. A GDE is an internationally recognised NHS provider delivering exceptional care, efficiently, through the use of world-class digital technology and information. Exemplars will share their learning and experiences to enable other trusts to follow in their footsteps as quickly and effectively as possible. NHS England is currently supporting GDE’s through funding and international partnership opportunities to establish proven models that can be rolled out across the NHS more broadly. In some cases, this will be sharing software or a common IT team. Others will adopt standard methodologies and processes.
About Nuance Healthcare
Nuance provides intelligent systems that support a more natural and insightful approach to clinical documentation, freeing clinicians to spend more time caring for patients. Nuance’s healthcare solutions capture, improve and communicate more than 300 million patient stories each year, helping more than 500,000 clinicians in 10,000 global healthcare organisations to drive meaningful clinical and financial outcomes. Nuance’s award-winning clinical speech recognition, medical transcription, CDI, coding, quality and medical imaging solutions provide a more complete and accurate view of patient care.
About Nuance Communications, Inc.
Nuance Communications, Inc. is a leading provider of voice and language solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with devices and systems. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com.
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Contact Information
For Press
Vanessa Richter
Nuance Communications, Inc
Tel: + 32-9-239-8031
Email: vanessa.richter@nuance.com
Jessica Dickman
Hotwire Global for Nuance Communications
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