The Benefits of Medical Speech-to-Text

What is medical speech-to-text?

Medical speech-to-text, also known as medical speech recognition (MSR), is a technology that allows you to dictate your medical notes instead of typing them. This way, if you’re not a fast typer, your typing speed won’t limit you in recording information during a patient encounter. As you speak, what you say will appear as text in the encounter notes within your EMR system, where MSR technology is typically housed.

The benefits of medical speech-to-text

Medical speech-to-text offers many benefits, including the following:

• Less clicking through EMR interfaces: With MSR, you can simply speak your notes and then watch them fill the appropriate boxes in your EMR. This process eliminates the need to click a box before you start typing. Plus, it’s not unheard of for busy practitioners to click the wrong box and wind up storing their notes in an incorrect location.
• Streamlined document handling: MSR’s voice recognition is so powerful that you can use it to create, modify and sign encounter notes in one fell swoop. The same goes for electronic prescriptions or lab orders. MSR doesn’t just improve your note-taking; it expedites your other patient-facing work as well.
• No transcription: Before MSR, any patient notes captured on audio had to be recorded and then painstakingly transcribed. The process was tedious, lengthy and error-prone. MSR eliminates this obstacle. Medical speech-to-text is especially beneficial if a patient is transferring to another practice and you need to make your notes legible to new practitioners.
• Far fewer spelling errors: As your MSR platform learns, it ensures that all of your notes hit the page with the exact words you desire. Think of it as a real-time spell-check. Though it’s always smart to proofread your notes, you can assume relatively safely that what you’ve said is indeed what appears in your EMR.
• More reimbursement: Any experienced doctor or nurse practitioner knows that typing notes is a conduit to patient charts filled with shorthand. The problem is, your shorthand might not mean much to anyone who isn’t you. This confusion can prove problematic when you file claims with payers — how can you be reimbursed when payers don’t know what your notes mean? Because medical speech-to-text results in fully written notes, it eliminates this issue. 
• More hands-on patient care: If you’re typing your notes, you’re probably not looking at the patient. If you’re recording them for medical speech-to-text, you can have a better conversation with the patient. You can even capture the patient’s actual words without having to type your own notes into your EMR. In other words, MSR streamlines not only your experience with the patient but also the patient’s experience with you.

How is medical speech recognition used?

MSR is often available as a third-party EMR integration, though many of the best medical software platforms include voice-to-text tools with their patient note-taking platform. In either case, it is simple to use: Click the record button; then say what you need to say. Because most modern laptops and tablets come with a built-in mic, you shouldn’t need any extra hardware to make your MSR tools usable. 

Your MSR tools will likely also come with short-key capabilities. You can use these short keys to more easily move the text you’ve spoken between sections of your EMR or patient notes. The result is a more streamlined note-taking experience.

MSR learns new words the more often you use your tools. This comes in handy, given the heavy amount of jargon in medicine. Plus, once you correct the misspelling of a word in your notes, your MSR will know how to spell it correctly next time. As your MSR tools continuously improve, so does your note-taking. 

Is medical speech-to-text HIPAA-compliant?

Two factors determine whether your medical speech-to-text tool is HIPAA-compliant:

• The provider’s HIPAA compliance: A real-life example best explains this condition of HIPAA compliance: In late 2019, Amazon introduced a medical speech-to-text tool, and because Amazon Web Services (AWS) is HIPAA-eligible, so is its MSR platform.
• The existence of a business associate agreement (BAA): Although HIPAA-eligible services are generally secure and good at protecting connected devices, a BAA is an indicator that your dictated notes are as safe as possible. You can obtain a BAA by contacting the entity that oversees your MSR’s HIPAA eligibility. To use the Amazon example, you would contact an AWS representative to request a BAA. Once you have your BAA, you can use Amazon’s MSR without any worries about HIPAA compliance.

Medical speech-to-text is just the start

Medical speech-to-text is one of quite a few helpful EMR tools. EMR platforms also include tools for charting and note-taking, customizability, e-prescribing and labs, interoperability, and telehealth. Confirm that your EMR platform provides these features, and if medical speech-to-text is included, it will elevate your operations even further.