Borgess Medical Center Cuts Transcription Costs by 40 Percent with Philips SpeechMagic

Borgess Medical Center has reduced its transcription costs by $212,000 over the past 12 months as a result of implementing the Philips speech recognition technology SpeechMagic. At Borgess, 129 physicians are using SpeechMagic-based dictation for various medical reports, including medical records, emergency medicine, cardiology, occupational medicine and physical therapy. 

Borgess Medical Center is a 424-bed teaching hospital in Kalamazoo, Mich. Borgess integrated SpeechMagic together with the dictation workflow Fusion Text from Dolbey into its Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system.

"We aimed for a smooth transition to speech recognition without burdening physicians with additional work. Therefore we chose an integrated back-end solution that doesn't change the doctors' working habits," said Martha Morris, IT director, Borgess.

The transition to speech recognition commenced with training SpeechMagic to each physician's voice characteristics. During this phase dictations were transcribed normally but SpeechMagic analyzed the resulting text and audio data, with the technology adapting to the author's dictation style, dialect and vocabulary. Once enough data has been gathered physicians are placed in active speech recognition mode at the click of a button, without requiring any change of their working habits. Medical transcriptionists are now presented with a recognized draft of each dictation for review, correction and completion.

After a year, the cost of outsourced transcription services is down by 40 percent of the original $530,000, which represents a saving of $212,000. The change from typing to editing has resulted in productivity gains for medical transcriptionists of up to 50 percent. 

The productivity increase has reduced report turnaround time to four — 72 hours, compared with 24 to 96 hours previously. Immediately after a report has been edited, it is saved in the EMR and available for the physician to sign.

Gail Price, manager medical transcriptionist for Borgess points out, "In the course of the last six months I have lost four staff members. Thanks to SpeechMagic I had to fill only two positions, as we are now able to handle the workload with a smaller team."

Price continued, "Fusion Text powered by SpeechMagic has helped us increase our productivity, cut costs and improve the working environment. Releasing reports shortly after consultation positively impacts patient care. We are highly satisfied with the product of SpeechMagic."