PracticeLink.com recently spoke to several physicians employing Emdat's integration with EMRs for the article Transcription gone high tech. Because Emdat allows them to continue to dictate while still enjoying the benefits of EMRs, they're saving time and providing better patient care.

Like many healthcare organizations in recent years, Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation and Loyola University Health System have adopted electronic medical records (EMRs) as a way to streamline their documentation process. However, converting to EMRs without disrupting physician workflow presented a unique challenge, given that many doctors prefer dictating patient notes orally as opposed to entering information manually into a computer. For both health systems, the solution came in the form of EMR integration from Emdat Inc. Read all about it.

A recent HISTALK blog post included the following reader-submitted article about the value of transcription in modern healthcare documentation.

Emdat Mobile for iPhone is reviewed in a post today on iMedicalApps.

Blogger Felasfa Wodajo, MD notes that he's been an Emdat user for 3 years, and finds that the app is "a very nice advance over using a digital dictaphone and special software to upload dictations."

In case his readers (his primary audience is doctors) don't know about Emdat, Dr Wodajo provides details about Emdat's medical dictation and transcription suite of software applications, mentioning, specifically, the potential impact of functionality like DaRT on the healthcare industry. He also cites our recently released white paper, "Facilitate EMR Success."

iMedicalApps is a online medical publication written by...

Fitchburg, WI (July 20, 2010) - A new method of populating electronic medical records (EMRs) that pulls patient information directly from a medical transcription enables physicians to keep their daily workflow the same, according to a white paper released today by Emdat, a provider of web-based medical transcription software.

Most EMR systems on the market today require physicians to personally scroll through an extensive list of checkboxes for every patient they see.  As a result they're forced to spend a large part of their day entering data into a computer.  Entitled "Facilitate EMR Success: Discrete Reportable Transcription Shifts Documentation Burden Off Physicians," the white paper cites a finding by the AC Group, a health care technology consultancy, that a physician who sees 40 patients a day will spend an average of 140 minutes entering patient data.

By contrast, Emdat's Discrete accurate Reportable Transcription, or DaRT,...

Emdat has long supported the idea that dictation and transcription should be a vital element in EMR/EHR adoption, believing that a physician's time is better served practicing medicine than entering data into an EMR system. This approach not only transfers data-entry responsibilities away from physicians but also allows users to benefit from the richer narrative information and increased accuracy that medical transcription can provide.

Recently, two stories were printed in medical journals that support our stance, reporting that physicians are largely dissatisfied with current EHR systems because of both poor usability and the reduced productivity that results. See the articles below.

EHRs Get a Failing Grade on Usability —Internal Medicine News Study Finds Gap Exists Between Technology Expectations, Reality —American Academy of Family Physicians...

Providers and MTSOs who use Emdat can now populate EMRs with information entered by transcriptionists rather than physicians, allowing doctors to focus on patient care and potentially leading to significant cost savings. By relieving physicians of this time-consuming data entry responsibility, which ultimately reduces the average number of patients he or she can see in a day, DaRT eliminates what has been a major challenge to the successful adoption of electronic records. "For some time, electronic medical records have promised to improve patient care and lower costs,” said Randy Olver, chief executive officer of Emdat. "By enabling physicians to use these systems without sacrificing the time they can spend with patients, the DaRT solution helps providers turn that hope into a reality.”

Doctors can continue to create notes or dictations using their preferred method and send them to a medical transcriptionist, who enters the information into an electronic form. The contents are then uploaded to an EMR as...

Emdat has developed technology which easily adapts dictation into transcribed digital records. The purpose of this is to have technology serve man not man serve technology. The ability to populate these digital transcriptions back into the EMR makes for a winning combination of improving patient care as well as better data capture. The following article alludes to the fact that EMR implementations can be problematic if approached incorrectly and supports keeping the physcian out of the clerical business.

Physicians are pushing the federal Health & Human Services Department to include physician narratives in the proposed regulations for electronic health records. Doctors use the narrative to expand on an assessment and offer subjective and objective evaluations of a case, as well as outline the treatment plan. Some doctors use speech recognition technology for their narratives in EHR systems. The public has 60 days to comment on the HHS regulations.

"No matter how good [EHR records] are, you'll never get the flavored nuance of the patient's [situation] if you don't have an unstructured note," said Dr. Steven Schiff, the medical director and service chief of cardiology at Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center, in Fountain Valley, Calif., in an eWEEK interview.

Emdat, a world leader in online-based medical transcription software, is taking on a leadership role with the Health Story Project. Health Story develops and promotes standards that support the flow of information between narrative documents and electronic medical record systems (EMR ).

"As a provider of transcription software and data storage to thousands of medical transcription companies and healthcare providers around the globe, Emdat is well situated to provide meaningful insights for the critical work Health Story is doing," said Randy Olver, Emdat CEO.

As part of advancing Health Story goals, Emdat leaders will provide strategic direction for the project, speak at industry events, serve as media spokespeople and continue sculpting its technologies in accordance with the project’s standards.

“Emdat’s direct commitment to Health Story supports further development of specifications for the transfer of information from narrative document types directly to EMR systems,” said Health Story...

How medical transcription will be affected by a Nationalized Health Care Record is a common question these days.

All of the soundbites that are in the air definitely keep us thinking about the future, and we've had many discussions about this. The most likely probability is that there won't be significant change at a national level, due to all of the healthcare lobbies, etc. Under a new administration, there may major reforms in this area followed by major changes in healthcare, but I think the likely hood of that is very slim.

That said, EMR systems are still emerging, pushing medical facilities to "reduce transcription costs" by using Voice Recognition and Templating features of their systems. With that in mind, we are moving forward internally with many development efforts to stay on top of this.

First, Voice Recognition tops our list, and several of our clients are ramping up.  We believe the technology partner we've gone with for Voice Recognition will exceed the claims made by other vendors, keeping us in play for facilities that want to go with this technology.

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Emdat is planning on attending the upcoming MTIA  (Medical Transcription Industry Association)  in Louisville, KY.  The meeting will be held from April 22-25, 2009. Emdat will sponsor a booth with plans to meet with any current MTSOs as well as any new prospects who might be interested in improving their dictation and transcription process flow via Emdat's web based platform. The TASP model is easy to implement and one of the best methods to populate  EMRs via HL7 interfaces. Software as a service is growing in popularity because their is no upfront costs or maintenance required.

Being in the medical transcription field for so long, I'm always fascinated by the different processes that clinics use to document visits, and I almost always bring up dictation to them.  Maybe I'll talk to the right person and get a sale out of it, but that's not my primary goal.  My goal is to understand real-world examples of how people are doing medical documentation, so that we can improve our product.

I recently had a doctor's appointment, and noticed that there was a computer in the exam room with me.  The nurse came in, took my vitals, entered them in on the computer, and left.  When the doctor came in, he worked with me for quite some time, and entered his findings into the computer.

Instinctively, I asked the doctor if he ever dictated any of his notes.  He said that the policy at their clinic was to not do this, and that more and more facilities are moving to EMRs.  I told him what I our company did, and we talked about the pros and cons of their methods.  He was definitely spending more...

As a service to the medical facilities, Emdat, with very few exceptions, provides interfacing at no charge.  That is not always the case for EMR companies. At times, the costs charged for the EMR side of the interface can be prohibitive to moving forward. This is frustrating not only to transcription companies trying to win the business by providing better service, but also to the medical facilities which would realize  more value with their EMR. HL7 is the most common interface, but generally requires involvement for either the scheduling/demographic interface or textual/discrete interface back into the EMR.

If costs are prohibitive or cooperation is not forthcoming by the EMR software provider, we do have some options which are pretty straightforward and will save on cost. Don't panic - you can still interface to the scheduler to improve accuracy for the transcriptionist, and Emdat will store all transcriptions on our servers for as long as you are a client. Additionally we can bring past historical transcriptions...

For the past 50 years, transcription has been the most efficient means of documenting a patient encounter.  During this time frame, the transcription industry has grown to be a multi-billion dollar industry annually.  Doctors love the convenience of dictating the encounter and the time savings they realize. Administrators frown each time they receive a transcription bill and are constantly trying to find a solution that will dramatically decrease or eliminate their transcription cost.

One popular solution to eliminate or reduce transcription costs is to implement an EMR type of system. The system allows clinicians or their staff to document the patient encounter on-line, thereby eliminating or drastically reducing the need for transcription. In a recent article titled “Transcription’s Coopetition with EMR’s”  by Bob Haugen, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Emdat, Inc., he explains the problems associated with such an approach. These problems result in loss of revenue for the health care facility.

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Last month, Bob Haugen, Emdat's VP of Sales and Marketing, posted on our blog about "Coopetition".  It took me a while to figure that word out, but it's really a great word when describing our system in relation to other systems at a medical facility.  Some facilities have practice management systems, electronic medical records systems, dictation systems, hospital information systems, radiology systems, etc.  Quite a few of these boast a transcription module to go along with their primary function.  But what does each system have in common?  They all can integrate with Emdat.

Ever since Emdat started, we've prided ourselves on our simple integration strategy.  We developed tools to accept data from other vendor's systems, so that patient demographics, appointment information, and referring physician data can be easily accessed by typists and the medical staff.  We also created methods with which we could interact with EMR systems.  The key to our integration was that we provided most of these interfaces...

EMRs have been around for some 20 plus years and in that time frame, have slowly been adopted by more and more medical facilities.  Many go into the implementation phase of an EMR based upon the  information received from their EMR vendor during the sales process.  Eliminating transcription is the number one cost justification for purchasing an EMR.  EMR vendors know this is a thorn in the side of medical facilities and any system that can reduce or eliminate transcription would be widely received.  The theory is a sound one.  Take a clinician who dictates and utilizes a transcription service and eliminate that monthly transcription expense by having the doctor use a template on-line within the EMR.  Immediately, the savings are realized in the elimination of transcription expenses.  Administrators rejoice because this was one of the major reasons they elected to implement an EMR.

Within one to two weeks after implementing the EMR and its template features, clinicians are upset because they have increased...