What Doctors Want

There is a great line from Top Gun…”I feel the need for speed.” What physicians want is an ability to document a patient encounter quickly, easily, and painlessly. The new government HITECH Act, President Obama signed in February of 2009, offers incentives that are attractive. But, what’s known as the “EMR Act” asks physicians and groups to invest handily. The good news is new technology is offering ways to document physician/patient encounters faster. EHR/EMR products are offering dozens of ways to manage patient information. But, the question remains; is a doctor spending their money and time wisely?

A recent encounter with a physician identifies the proverbial challenge. Dr. Maverick looks forward to seeing an average of 30 patients a day. She spends $300 – $500 a month for an electronic medical record system. The system offers loads of bells and whistles to manage her patient information. But, all she really wants is to manage her documents, store, and generate reports from the patient encounters she creates in a “word” based system. She might never use half of the features in her EMR because she and her administrators don’t have the time to learn and interpret them. Furthermore, she has a family of her own, coach’s volleyball, and wants a life outside the office. There is only so much time to do her work well and satisfy new regulatory standards.

The electronic medical record system satisfies HIT standards. She will be reimbursed for the transition to an EMR through Medicare. However, at the end of the day, she or a PA has to spend an average of twelve minutes on each patient record. She clicks the radio buttons, fills in her notes, and checks all the blank spaces to satisfy the form entry requirements. After seeing thirty patients, she or a PA now looks forward to spending at least three hours documenting those encounters.

Dr. Maverick realizes there is subtle transition from being a physician who cares for patients to administering their information. She is also aware that her patients are aggravated that she appears more concerned with her tablet computer than their issues. If she could find a way to spend less time capturing the patient encounter, she could see more patients, fill more needs, enhance her profit, and have more time in general.

A colleague recommends that she open her options and consider looking at alternative methods to the “standard” EMR. Dr Maverick soon finds technology that not only allows her to Dictate using back-end speech recognition, but she can also create word documents on her PC with pre-configured templates when dictating a note is not fruitful… The typical time to capture a patient encounter is now drastically reduced from 12 minutes to 2 or 3 per encounter, saving her hours a day. Furthermore these “old school” ways of capturing data is now enhanced via automation technologies like Natural Language Processing, which allows for the extraction, organizing, indexing, mining, semantic searching, and of course reporting of this critical clinical information to satisfy the new government standards.

Dr. Maverick realizes that if she dictated and maintained her “word” files, she could save at least three hours. Furthermore, if she used Speech Recognition, she could save even more time. Lastly, the new technology allows her to organize her clinical data without the massive investment being encouraged by the EMR marketplace.

Much of the new technology we are referring to is based on Natural Language Processing that can extract the medical terminology from an unstructured document (“word” text). Once captured, the text is assigned to UMLS codes and the ICD9 codes. These codes can then be organized, semantically searched, mined, and placed neatly in the emerging CCD (Continual Care Document) document format for reporting purposes. In the end, there are ways to save hundreds of dollars a day, bill for more time, and satisfy government regulations using traditional methods more wisely.

The Physician therefore does not have to resort to an expensive EHR/EMR alternative and learn complicated computer technology and skills required for someone to manage her encounters. Sometimes the old routines are best. Amplifications of those techniques offer new ways to document, store, and manage physician encounters. These methods are available and require far less investment and CHANGE from the styles that physicians already enjoy.

We recommend that physicians consider very new technology that speeds office procedures without adding more pain. In an age where time and accuracy matter, doesn’t it make sense to amplify and enhance methods you already understand?