Kinesh Patel1, Marcus Harbord1. 1. Department of Gastroenterology, Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Digital voice transcription has been introduced widely in the National Health Service (NHS), though primarily in radiology departments. There has been a long-standing problem with recruitment of medical secretaries within the NHS, leading to long delays in the production of correspondence from outpatient clinics. OBJECTIVE: To determine whether use of widely available digital transcription software improves efficiency and the time taken to produce correspondence. METHODS: The project used a prospective, crossover trial design in a 'real-world' environment. Correspondence from clinics was transcribed after dictation by a secretary using conventional analogue audio tape or the dictation software. After a 2-week washout period the same clinics' dictations were transcribed using the other method to produce identical correspondence. The two sets of letters were compared. RESULTS: The mean time for the secretary to produce letters for a complete clinic using digital dictation was 66 min whereas analogue dictation took 121 min (p<0.00002). There was no difference in the number of mistakes per letter (p>0.05). CONCLUSION: Voice transcription software significantly decreased the time taken to transcribe outpatient clinic letters with minimal training of secretarial staff, resulting in improved efficiency.
RCT Entities:
BACKGROUND: Digital voice transcription has been introduced widely in the National Health Service (NHS), though primarily in radiology departments. There has been a long-standing problem with recruitment of medical secretaries within the NHS, leading to long delays in the production of correspondence from outpatient clinics. OBJECTIVE: To determine whether use of widely available digital transcription software improves efficiency and the time taken to produce correspondence. METHODS: The project used a prospective, crossover trial design in a 'real-world' environment. Correspondence from clinics was transcribed after dictation by a secretary using conventional analogue audio tape or the dictation software. After a 2-week washout period the same clinics' dictations were transcribed using the other method to produce identical correspondence. The two sets of letters were compared. RESULTS: The mean time for the secretary to produce letters for a complete clinic using digital dictation was 66 min whereas analogue dictation took 121 min (p<0.00002). There was no difference in the number of mistakes per letter (p>0.05). CONCLUSION: Voice transcription software significantly decreased the time taken to transcribe outpatient clinic letters with minimal training of secretarial staff, resulting in improved efficiency.
Authors: John A Pezzullo; Glenn A Tung; Jeffrey M Rogg; Lawrence M Davis; Jeffrey M Brody; William W Mayo-Smith Journal: J Digit Imaging Date: 2008-12 Impact factor: 4.056