The Ambulatory Surgery Center (ASC) of Greater New York is a Medicare-certified same day surgery center licensed by New York State. Since 1990, it has earned the approval of the prestigious Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care. The facility is dedicated to total eye care – from cataract and glaucoma surgery to diabetic retinopathy and refractive surgery. The Center is distinguished by its renowned surgeons and its use of innovative, leading edge technology. Over the past 25 years ASC has continued expanding its operations, currently serving over 6,000 patients annually.
CHALLENGES: Using in-house transcription services, administrative staff had been steadily facing longer and longer backlogs in closing surgeons’ operative and clinical notes. Accuracy of traditional transcription was problematic. “We were quickly outgrowing our system and staying on top of a large volume of paperwork made everything more complicated. We needed a clinical notes solution that would be accurate, reliable and would be delivered on time” said Erin Duffy, Clinical Operations Manager.
SOLUTION: In 2009, ASC attended an NYC workshop where Datel Solutions made a presentation on speech recognition. Erin invited Datel Solutions to perform a needs analysis at ASC. What emerged was that Ambulatory Surgery Center required a method of filing each patient’s case using traditional Microsoft Word. The challenge was to make it as easy as possible for the surgeons to focus on the medical-procedure dictation, while allowing entry of demographic data to be done by back office staff.
In July 2009, Datel implemented a Dragon Medical pilot solution incorporating Microsoft word with a workflow that enabled surgeons to focus exclusively on the clinical dictation. The pilot began with one of ASC’s most demanding surgeons whose procedures were highly complex and whose transcripted notes were extremely difficult for in-house transcriptionists to keep up with.
Datel Solutions specialists designed Dragon Medical voice shortcuts that provided cues and reminder points for consistent descriptive flow of the surgeon’s operative notes. “The key was to allow for highly customized dictation within a structured roadmap. The process also needed to be simple to use as many surgeons were not full-time staff and did not use the system every day” said Rick Lobel of Datel Solutions. Soon after training, the surgeon was using Dragon Medical to generate his operative notes.
Since then, ASC has rolled out the Datel’s solution to all surgeons, who are now using Datel’s Dragon Medical workflow to generate their post-operative and clinical notes.
“The training and expertise provided by Rick and his staff was extremely helpful. The surgeons found their handouts and simple customized instruction sheets to be most useful,” said Ms. Duffy. “This gave us the confidence to expand our use of the system to bring Dragon Medical to the next group of high-end surgeons at ASC. Datel’s flexibility and one-on-one training sessions were a perfect accommodation for our surgeons unpredictable schedules”, Ms. Duffy added.
The Dragon Medical speech recognition and custom designed work-flow solution designed Datel Solutions has helped ASC to keep up to date, accurate clinical records, while gaining big savings on transcription costs.