On Tuesday, September 7, 2010, Emdat will be making InScribe 4.97 available for download. On Monday, September 20, 2010, our web applications will be deployed to our servers, upgrading them to InQuiry and InCommand 5.8. Below are details on what is new in each application. Please note that some of the features in the InScribe release on the 4th will only be available after the associated InCommand updates are deployed on the 20th.

Comment Tagging Through InCommand, MTSOs will be able to create Comment Tags – canned notations about a transcription. Via InScribe, an MT will be able to choose one or more Comment Tags to apply to a transcription. Comment Tags can be indicators such as "Missing Patient Information" or "Could not Understand Dictator." A color can be associated with each Comment Tag. Through InQuiry's Review folder, a medical facility will see the Comment folder icon in the color of the chosen tag, and will be able to filter transcriptions by a given tag. This functionality will be extended...

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,...

We’ve got an app for that! A brand new application is available in the iPhone App Store for Emdat account holders. Emdat Mobile for iPhone allows providers to obtain a listing of their scheduled appointments, perform dictation, and even review and complete transcriptions from their Preliminary folder. Even clients that do not send us an appointment listing can still create new dictation and review transcription using the Emdat Mobile product. (Note: iTouch and iPad devices will also work with the Emdat Mobile product, however iTouch users will need to purchase a separate microphone to perform dictation). This is a free download from the App Store.

ITHeathcare News, CMIO.net:,...

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...

In a continued effort to supply high quality, reliable service to its clients, Emdat has delegated its fax services to ESKER. Emdat selected ESKER because of its extensive experience and impressive workload capabilities, required to handle the 4,000 faxes a day that Emdat's autofax system generates. With ESKER, Emdat clients can now fax internationally. Additionally, Emdat will be able to channel more energy into core development rather than delivery.

ESKER is a global fax server leader with nearly two decades of experience and over 80,000 document automation servers installed. ESKER On Demand service provides high volume capabilities, internal detailed reporting and a more stable, modern infrastructure.

Emdat launched its new quarterly newsletter "Between the Lines" this month. Sent to current and prospective MTSO clients, the enewsletter strives to keep recipients up to date on Emdat's products and services, EMR integration, and industry news.  

To subscribe to the newsletter, please send an email to enewsletter@emdat.com

Established in 1985 by proclamation from then President Ronald Reagan, National Medical Transcriptionist Week brings public and industry-wide attention to the role and contribution of medical transcriptionists. Emdat celebrates the critical role MTs play in the accurate capture and documentation of patient encounter information. Their interpretive, skilled knowledge remains a highly important aspect of high quality patient health care. We hope you're having a great week!

 

I had the pleasure of meeting Cindy Richardson at the MTIA meeting in Daytona. Cindy has an offering to assist MTSOs with HIPAA compliance training either online of available via CD. Mitagate you liability by training all MTs to understand their responsibilities as it relates to HIPAA compliance. The name of the company is Review of Systems Expanded.

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...

Look for Emdat at The 21st MTIA annual conference in Daytona Beach, FL, April 28th - May 1st, 2010. CEO Randy Olver, President Steve Palmisano, VP-Technology Jeff Olver, VP-Sales Bob Haugen and Director of Business De velopment Chuck Strain will be in attendance and manning our brand new 10' x 20' booth. Stop by Booth #13 and say hi! 

ADVANCE, provider of multiple healthcare-related publications, Web sites, and services, brought together some of the leading professionals and representatives of top companies in the field to discuss the future of transcription and how it will affect MTs—both now and down the road. Emdat CEO Randy Olver gathered with Tracy Boesch, TransTech Medical Solutions, Jay Cannon, Webmedx, Michael Clark, MedQuist, Peter Durlach, Nuance Communications, Inc, Dianna Hall, CMT, AHDI-F, Covenant Healthcare, Barb Marques, CMT, AHDI-F, to discuss the challenges MTs face in the changing health care environment, the impact changes will have on recruiting new MTs into the field, and whether the perceived reputation of the profession is well-deserved. Read the article here:  All Hands on Deck: ADVANCE Roundtable Discussion of the MT Profession

Emdat CEO Randy Olver, along with over 75 fellow members of the Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI) and the Medical Transcription Industry Association (MTIA), convened in Washington, DC for the organizations’ fifth-annual Advocacy Summit, March 23-25, 2010. The HITECH and subsequent proposed regulations concerning “meaningful use” of certified EHR systems have prompted the medical transcription sector to educate legislators on the significance of securing continued access by physicians to the dictation-transcription process.

Attendees met with their local state-elected officials and discussed the importance of dictation and transcription in the future of healthcare. Randy spoke with Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl (D - WI) and Wisconsin Representatives...

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.

PITTSBURGH, PA, January XX, 2007 – Emdat, Inc. a leading national provider of transcription work flow and management solution M*Modal, a leader in on-demand, speech understanding services, have entered into an agreement that is expected to elevate Emdat’s competitiveness in the marketplace. This partnership leads to an integration of M*Modal’s proprietary speech understanding technology into Emdat’s hosted medical transcription platform and will enable Emdat to provide its clients with the leading edge transcription technology that covers the entire cycle of health care documentation – from capture of physician dictation to publishing of final medical reports.

Emdat is pleased to offer the AnyModal CDS product to their ever expanding dictation and transcription business. Steve Palmisano, CEO of Emdat says, “M*Modal’s AnyModal CDS complements the Emdat process because physicians can be added at anytime and do not need to be aware that speech understanding technology is being used in the transcription process. Due to the fact that over 32,000 clinicians and over 1,300 medical facilities currently use Emdat we had to be very careful in our choice for the best available speech understanding technology.”

...

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.

I recently met Marianne Kleen from Textware Solutions at the AHDI meeting and she expressed how happy many medical transcriptionists were that they were able to use Instant Text within Emdat's InScribe typing platform. Marianne gave me this hyperlink to an excellent article.

Instant Text is a great productivity tool used with Emdat's InScribe.

Textware Solutions, developer and publisher of Instant Text, counts among its customers a large number of Emdat users happy to increase their productivity in the process of clinical documentation. While working in Emdat they can seamlessly utilize the knowledge base of their Instant Text glossaries that contain the medical words and phrases they have to deal with every day. The unique features of Instant Text allow them to have tens of thousands of words, drug names, phrases, addresses right at their fingertips with...

MTIA 2010
Emdat will be attending the Medical Transcription Industry Association (MTIA) national meeting in Daytona Beach, Florida, April 28th - May 1st, 2010.

AHDI 2010
Emdat will attend the Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity 31st Annual Convention and Expo in Austin, TX, in 2010.
 

AHIMA 2010
Emdat will attend the American Health Information Management Association Convention and Exhibit in Orlando, FL, September 25–30, 2010.
 

Emdat is proud to annouce its Gold membership in the Medical Transcription Industry Association (MTIA). As a MTIA Gold member, Emdat will be highly visible leader within the healthcare industry and an important contributor to national healthcare policy. MTIA is the world's largest association for medical transcription service organizations. It is a not-for-profit trade association serving the needs of medical transcription companies, vendors, and health information management professionals.

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...

RANDY OLVER NAMED EMDAT CEO, WILL LEAD NEXT PHASE OF GROWTH FOR MEDICAL TRANSCRIPTION SOLUTIONS PROVIDER

Fitchburg, WI (Nov. 5, 2009) – Emdat, a world leader in online-based medical transcription solutions, has tapped Randy Olver as its new CEO, effective immediately.

Emdat’s founding partners, who remain actively involved in the business, selected Olver to serve as CEO of the 10-year-old company. Steve Palmisano, one of the founders who had been CEO, will serve as president.

“Randy’s diverse business experience is exactly what we’ve been seeking to guide Emdat to the next level so that we can continue providing world-class transcription products and services to our clients,” Palmisano said. “We’ve tripled in size in the past five years and, looking forward, our business needs have grown dramatically.”

Emdat, which experienced double-digit growth during the difficult business environment of the past year, remains committed to its core business model of providing medical transcription...

I had the pleasure of working next to Frank Takacs and Angie Lachman from CanScribe at the AHDI meeting in Nashville, TN. CanScribe offers the CanScribe Career Centre which places qualified medical transcriptionists who have completed their course curriculum. Additionally internship opportunities can be offered to MTSOs who want to try out the newly qualified MTs. The MTSOs can get up to 100 hours of free work from these MTs to make sure it is a good fit for both parties.

Are you ready to have some fun? Emdat is again hosting it's Users Group meeting December 9-11th 2009 in New Orleans, LA. This is a great opportunity to learn more about Emdat's suite of web based applications as well as network with other MTSOs who have chosen to utilize the Emdat platform. You can register by clicking on the link. Please come join us for an opportunity to develop some long lasting business relationships.

Emdat is proud to annouce its membership in the Medical Transcription Industry Association (MTIA). MTIA is the world's largest association for medical transcription service organizations. It is a not-for-profit trade association serving the needs of medical transcription companies, vendors, and health information management professionals.

Congratulations to Bobby Powers and eMedDox for launching their new web site. Bobby has been a partner of Emdat's for quite some time now and has put together some creative marketing ideas to get his message out to the industry. Best of luck Bobby!

I just spoke with one of my new MTSOs and she indicated that the recent power outage in the Midwest had caused her problems. I reminded her that Emdat allows you to outsource within our software other MTSOs. Knowing that you cannot power up the software is an issue but if you develop relationships with other MTSOs on the Emdat platform it would allow you to manage that work flow with their help thus avoiding service interruptions to your clients. You always need a backup plan when you are a MTSO.

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.

...

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.

We are very excited to have Laura Lowe join Emdat's marketing team. Laura comes to Emdat from a large physician practice in Chicago where she was manager of marketing communications and graphic design. Laura's available to help our MTSO clients with marketing support. You can reach her at 608-270-6400 Ext. 373. As a UW-Madison School of Journalism grad, Laura's excited about coming back to Madtown and attending upcoming Big Ten football games.

Emdat is planning on attending the Annual Clinical Assembly of Osteopathic Specialists in Boca Raton, FL from Sept. 11-13th. We will be working in the OTTC booth. We also will attend the upcoming Arkansas MGMA meeting in Eureka Springs, AR from Sept. 17-19th working in the eMedDox booth. In October Emdat will be attending the Illinois Primary Health Care Association Leadership Conference in Galena, IL from Oct. 8-10 working with Mayfield Transcription.

If you are a medical transcription service organization or medical facility looking to improve your work flow process you might want to take a look at our flash presentation. Emdat has tried to address the needs of our clients by offering our software as a service. By supplying a totally integrated suite of web based applications, Emdat has helped many transcription organizations grow their businesses and many medical facilities streamline their transcription process. 

It was brought to my attention that Emdat's InScribe transcription application can be useful in assisting visually impaired medical transcriptionist when using an application called Jaws. I wanted to pass the following information along to anyone who might be interested.

We received this message from a physician in Australia who stated "My patient is Visually Impaired only and has perfect hearing. I would very much like to speak to you regarding the mechanics of using Jaws with the InScribe application. There are quite a number of people who have a significant visual handicap who are excellent typists (medical transcriptionists) and desperate to find gainful employment, not only from the financial point of view but also the social one."

Emdat is planning on attending the upcoming MTIA (Medical Transcription Industry Association) meeting in Long Beach, CA. The meeting will be held from April 23-26th. 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 has become a simple model to implement which improves work flow process for many MTSOs.

Emdat will be attending the upcoming Bones meeting which will be held in Charlotte, NC. Bones is the National Society of Orthopaedic Administrators. Our feelings are that we will be able to meet many key administrators in a discipline which utilizes dictation and transcription services quite frequently. Additionally we are hoping to expand our relationships, in terms of interfacing, with the many Electronic Medical Record software companies. Currently we have interfaces completed with Allscripts, NextGen, Misys, ECW, MediTech, Cerner, McKesson, Epic and many more.

When using auto fax or fax on demand keep the following items in mind. Security should be kept in mind such as restricting access to fax machines and verifying that fax numbers are actually appropriate for the doctors offices. The following link will be helpful as a reference.

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...

If you have doubts about the security of where and how your data is stored you will be able to sleep better at night once you review this site. Emdat has invested our money and time with Equinix, the best partner for securing your mission critical operations. I had the opportunity to tour the Equinix facility in Chicago recently with Jeff Olver (CTO Emdat) as well as one of our prospective Medical Transcription Service Organizations. Obviously MTSOs should be concerned about the security and reliability of the center where their data is stored as nothing is more important or critical to their day to day operations. Equinix offers five levels of security which is designed much like the Federal Reserve. Additionally Equinix offers five nines of up-time which is the best in the business. I know many of you have not had a chance to tour this facility so I encourage you to take the virtual tour by clicking on the link above. Believe me you will...

Emdat will be having its second annual Users Group Meeting in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada. The dates will be December 9-11 at the Golden Nugget. We encourage you to register early as there is a cost saving. The theme for this years conference will be "Staying The Course".  Emdat promises to offer as much excitement as last years meeting in New Orleans. We hope you all can join us.

Emdat is a suite of web-based applications that completely automates the preparation, routing and delivery of the entire dictation, transcription and documentation process. Emdat begins with the proven foundation of traditional dictation and adds web-based cost-saving features to give clients a fully integrated solution that improves workflow, reduces cost, and saves time.

Previously, CEI transcriptionists -- all of whom worked off-site because of space constraints -- made frequent trips into the office to pick up dictations and drop off completed transcriptions. Along with being inconvenient, it was an administrative nightmare for CEI Project Manager Marsha Wylie. In addition, the company paid transcriptionists for each hour of drive time, making for a costly and inefficient combination.

Using Emdat, CEI's simplified its transcription process. A straightforward and user-friendly system, Emdat is easy to learn. CEI’s transcriptionists easily transitioned to the new online system. Administrators effortlessly...

Executive Healthcare Management Magazine's June edition mentions first steps to an EMR and lists Emdat's online web application which is used in the dictation/transcription process. Emdat has the ability to populate all historical transcriptions directly into a facilities electronic medical record thus making the EMR more valuable from the start. Since the interface is provided at no charge by Emdat, the solution is designed to improve the physician's operations as well as productivity.

Email and FTP sites are poor solutions for a transcription process. Email and FTP were designed as transport and storage mechanisms but  increase administration of the transcription process flow. The headaches occur due to accountability. The dictations (voice files) and documents generally must be manually associated and managed with the finished transcription. Additionally emails and FTP sites require special encryption and decryption software in order to be HIPAA compliant which is very difficult to manage.

Emdat gives a receipt code and assigns a TID (transcription identification number) with every dictation (voice file), which continues to associate throughout the transcription workflow even after completion. This process is automated and creates a verifiable audit trail to track receipts, uploads, downloads, edits, autofaxes (successful/unsuccessful), views, electronic signatures, printing, exports and more. The key is to make this process seamless to all involved in the transcription process and provide accountability for quality, timeliness and security. Since autofaxing is a popular and acceptable feature within Emdat there are sites that are availble to make sure you understand HIPAA's stance on this technology.

...

Recently it was brought to my attention that some facilities like to be charged by the page. Although this sounds very attractive at times I truly believe medical transcription companies open themselves up to potential losses by charging in this manner. I have talked to facilities that get charged anywhere from $2 per page to up words of $10 per page. My feelings are that by being too liberal with the definition of a page (not knowing how many lines are transcribed on that page) you potentially set yourself up for unprofitable business. My conversations with a transcription company owner revealed that they were charging $2 per page and that is what the market would bear. Immediately I went into the Emdat reports menu to see how many reports were produced in the past month for that account and then ran a report on how many lines were generated within that month. By dividing the number of reports by the total of number of lines (65 character line with spaces) I figured this company was charging 5.5 cents per line...

Emdat is going to be airing 800+ TV commercials in the Fort Wayne, IN area from May 7th until July 2nd. This will be our first attempt to use Television as a medium for marketing  Emdat's ASP to medical facilities as well as transcription companies. Spot Runner has made this affordable to at least try TV and see what type of response we get. This commercial will be aired on CNBC, CNN, Discovery, Fox News, The Golf Channel, The History Channel, MSNBC, and the Travel Channel. This could be our first and last TV commercial but at least we can play it on this blog and possibly on You Tube. Tell us what you think? Are we all wet?

For companies that pay attention to progress, every advancement in technology helps streamline an existing process, even if it was once thought it couldn't get any better.  With dictation, cassette tapes were first used to help offload the documentation of patient visits by freeing up some of the provider's time.  As telephone systems became popular, getting these audio files to typists that were off-site became easier, and reduced turnaround time for reports.  The internet had an almost immediate affect on how the dictation and transcription process could be made easier - transcriptions were now able to be transferred back to the physician electronically.  And as digital recorders became popular, physicians were able to use the software that came with these devices to transfer audio to the typists via e-mail or FTP.  But no system was available that really took advantage of every kind of dictation method, while keeping security of the process in mind.

The number of people on the internet has boomed.  Third...

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...

Although it should be pretty straightforward to estimate your costs for transcription I have found that it has been very difficult to do a direct comparison without validating numbers. To make a complex comparison simple I will only look at billing by the line and not compare that to other methods of billing (page, word etc.). Generally speaking there are three ways to bill by the line:

The  standard which is 65 characters per line which will include spaces and punctuation. Basic (Gross) Method which counts each carriage return as a line. Microsoft Word which uses an embedded line word counter similar to the basic method. The differences in costs of these three measures can be as different as an apple to an orange.

Let me give you an example....

Emdat, Incorporated 857 Collins Blvd. Covington, Louisiana 70533

AAMT standard calculates this address as 1 line Basic (Gross) calculates this address as 3 lines Word calculates this address as 3...

Some systems give transcription companies the option of charging for these lines.  Since Transcription Companies pay for the software that generates these lines, they have every right to charge their client for them.  Traditionally, anything on the final report is considered chargeable lines.  In the Emdat system, the transcription company or medical facility (whomever is contracted to use the software) not only have the choice of charging for headers and footers, but also patient demographic labels, clinician titles and credentials, first and last paragraphs of a transcription (if as a template).

The Print Template was first designed by Emdat and uses the technology built into Internet Explorer to allow for variable information before the transcription body and after the transcription body.  Because these variables are populated through setup screens and the transcriptionist doesn't type them, Transcription Companies can use Emdat without any additional expenses and usually save money by using Emdat. 

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Steve Jobs, founder of Apple computer, once said, "You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new."  Nothing has made that more visibly true to Emdat then when we implemented our Feedback system.  Emdat *is* asking our customers what they want, and for the most part are trying to deliver.  That can be a long road, and more ideas will come in while on that road, but we believe it is a road worth traveling.

Emdat is a constantly evolving system.  We originally built the system around the ideas of the three founders, who brought in their experience working at various medical institutions.  But their experiences were one-sided - coming mostly from a technical background.  Steve Palmisano, one of the founders, recognized this early on, and has always kept the User Experience in the foreground of our application development.  Almost no piece of any application goes out the door without Steve (and more recently, Rich and his...

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...

Emdat is proud to announce that development on our new PDA dictation application, "Emdat Mobile", is nearing completion and will be in beta in March.  Physicians with a PDA will be able to:

• Use their PDA to access their daily schedule
• Dictate against any patient
• Review prior transcription for patients on their schedule

In a recent artcle titled  "Affordable technology solutions for today’s busy practices", Shelly K. Schwartz of Cunningham Group identifies PDA devides as the wave of the future for the medical industry.

For more information on our PDA product, see the new Emdat Mobile link on our software page.  To participate in the beta, please drop us an e-mail at: beta@emdat.com.