Fusion Narrate Case Study: Pain Consultants of West Florida

"We would not go back and I wouldn't change where we're at. I think the company is great, I think the system is great - I've been really happy with the whole piece of the puzzle. Even I was surprised; I didn't expect the financial savings."

- Tamara Martin, Practice Manager

About Pain Consultants of West Florida

Pain Consultants of West Florida is a multi-disciplinary pain management facility committed to ethical patient care. At Pain Consultants of West Florida, patients are treated with compassionate care to help them restore function and get back to enjoying their life.

Opportunity

Providers at Pain Consultants of West Florida (PCWFL) spent each day working extra hours to complete stacks of charts. The practice needed a way for providers to document more efficiently and reduce lag time in chart completion. After examining the issue, it became clear the problem didn’t stem from which EMR providers were using or the information they were documenting. Instead, it was time spent manually entering information in the EMR.

To combat this, PCWFL considered employing scribes to work directly with the provider or using dictation software, such as cloud-based speech recognition. PCWFL determined speech recognition was more cost-effective and provided physicians more independence in their dictation. Rather than checking a scribe’s work, providers could instead check their own work in real time as they dictate.

PCWFL compared multiple speech recognition solutions, weighing functionality with cost and ensuring their solution would be simple to use and could recognize dictations from the full team. PCWFL determined that Dolbey's Fusion Narrate® powered by nVoq™ best met their needs. Fusion Narrate offers an Accuracy Optimization Service, as well as dedicated support and training, all at a cost most other vendors charge for software only.

Dictation Usage Graph

Dictations made by physicians at PCWFL since March 2020. Total words dictated see an overall increase throughout the year.

This growth parallels the practice's total increase in patient volume since the implementation of Fusion Narrate.

Solution

In the time it took one major vendor to respond to an inquiry, PCWFL had already signed a contract with Dolbey, received training, and was using Fusion Narrate. After completing the initial setup and training for Fusion Narrate, PCWFL has been extremely satisfied with the software. Stacks of charts no longer exist at the end of the day because providers are able to dictate a note and move on as they work throughout the day.

PCWFL has also been able to improve their efficiency through workflow automation. Fusion Narrate voice shortcuts and substitutions have saved the practice’s providers thousands of clicks in the EMR. This can be as simple as moving to the next field in the EMR hands-free to a more complex shortcut that inserts a template, complete with its own voice-navigated fields, directly into the EMR. PCWFL has used these complex shortcuts to build templates for chronic pain HPI and care plans, among others.

Results

PCWFL immediate benefits from implementing Fusion Narrate

Time Savings

The biggest benefit PCWFL has seen from adding speech recognition is time savings. Shortcuts are saving providers 10-15 clicks in the EMR for every shortcut they use. They’re also spending 4 minutes less per chart, saving each provider 140 minutes per day. On top of this, providers are reaching average rates of approximately 101 words per minute with dictation, which is much faster than typing information manually. With Fusion Narrate, charting is no longer the headache that it once was for PCWFL, and it is much less time consuming now.

Re-assign Staff

Within the first two days of implementation, PCWFL was able to re-assign staff in charge of correspondence dictations, reducing annual payroll by 2%. Instead of dedicating staff time to manually input information on behalf of providers in these correspondence dictations, providers themselves use Fusion Narrate to dictate directly into a Word document, then print, sign, and send the letter off to the intended party.

Increased Revenue

With Fusion Narrate, PCWFL was able to steadily add patient volume, increasing total patient volume by 14% since implementation and leading to an overall increase in revenue. The increased patient volume also allows PCWFL to have a larger impact in their community and continue serving compassionate care to more patients.

Carrie A. Steichen, DO

Carrie A. Steichen, DO
Physician at PCWFL

Results at a Glance:

  • 14% increase in patient volume since implementation
  • 2% reduction in annual payroll
  • Increased documentation efficiency, saving providers 140 minutes/day
  • Stacks of charts no longer pile up at the end of each day