By: Kathleen Courson, RN, BSN, Clinical Product Manager, MatrixCare

For those who are unfamiliar, Speech Recognition is a type of technology that enables an electronic device to recognize, analyze and understand spoken word or audio. Clinical teams can use this tool in a variety of beneficial ways including for streamlining documentation at the point of care, capturing accurate speech recognition through an extensive library of healthcare industry terms, and utilizing agency-defined dictionaries of frequently used names, phrases, abbreviations and templates.

Likewise, administrative staff can experience many benefits through their own portal, where reports can be viewed and printed, dictations can be listened to and corrected where needed, vocabulary can be added and edited uniquely for your users, and voice-activated templates can be created and managed.

MatrixCare uses nVoQ, a platform designed to be HIPAA-compliant, that brings speech-to-text functionality to any discipline given the security privilege to use our EMR. It’s built for home health and hospice providers to be secure, cloud-based, highly accurate, and easily accessible on a tablet or computer.

According to a study in the Journal of Graduate Medical Education, clinicians who spent more than six hours weekly after hours in EHR work were 2.9 times more likely to report burnout. Our Speech Recognition Technology can be used within narrative sections and communication notes — simplifying documentation for over-burdened staff in many ways.

Here are three major benefits of speech recognition for home health and hospice providers:

Document production in less than half the time It’s not uncommon for home health and hospice clinicians to complete documentation after work hours, when they’re more likely to have gaps in care details and could realize they need to wait for the next visit to fill those gaps.

With voice template capabilities and real-time speech-to-text, documentation can be completed at the bedside — in less than half the time it takes to type. This improved timeliness of documentation completion can ultimately help reduce errors and shorten reimbursement cycles.

Fewer errors With the ability to complete documentation in the home, at the bedside, or even in between visits, patient information is top of mind and therefor more accurate and complete. Speech recognition also supports the efficient entry of lengthy narrative information — and it doesn’t sacrifice accuracy to get it done. In fact, it helps reduce errors with the ability to capture voice notes using an extensive library of healthcare industry terms and agency-defined dictionaries of frequently used names, phrases, abbreviations and templates.

Work-life balance Home health and hospice providers are no strangers to high turnover among clinical staff. Between heavy workloads, long hours and the expectation to document after work hours, clinicians are experiencing burnout — and the result is an industry-wide staffing shortage.

Speech recognition technology can be a significant solution for this industry challenge by helping to reduce the amount of after-hours documentation that needs to be manually entered. Instead, clinicians can now document during their shift in half the time it normally takes them, which means their time off can truly be time off.

Are you ready to improve documentation time, reduce errors and give clinicians more work-life balance? Schedule a demo with MatrixCare to experience the first EMR to embed voice-recognition technology.

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