Transcription Costs – How Physicians Can Reduce or Eliminate Them

When you practice medicine, carefully watching the bottom line is critical to profitability. Thankfully, technological advancements have made it easier for providers to reduce or eliminate costs they previously couldn’t avoid. Transcription and scribing are recurring expenses that many medical centers have worked to reduce or eliminate through technology. While medical records are essential for documenting patient encounters and securing payment from insurance providers, the manual labor involved with transcription and scribing can quickly add up, especially for physicians with high patient volumes. As such, alternatives to medical transcription and scribing have gained considerable attention.

Front-End Speech Recognition

One cost-reduction tool many healthcare centers have adopted is front-end speech recognition. Fortunately, this technology has improved considerably in recent years. Providers have various speech recognition options to help them stay productive, better engage with their patients, and minimize charting time and the associated costs. In many cases, some front-end speech recognition solutions have helped providers eliminate transcription costs entirely. When doctors speak their findings and see text instantly appear on the screen in front of them, this not only speeds chart closure rates and accelerates payment, but it eliminates the need to have transcriptionists or scribes on staff.

Back-End Speech Recognition

For caregivers who don’t have the bandwidth to edit text on a screen as they dictate, back-end speech recognition solutions allow providers to leverage the savings and speed of speech technology. For example, a physician can dictate into her mobile device and securely send it to a speech recognition server for processing. The technology quickly delivers a high-quality draft to the doctor for post-visit review and approval. More sophisticated speech recognition solutions will even offer options for off-site human editing and provide productivity tools that further minimize charting tasks on physicians and their support staff.

If you’re ready to work more efficiently or if transcription cost reduction has become a priority for your business, contact Athreon for a free consultation and demo. Athreon offers a free 7-day trial where you can test our speech recognition technology without any risk or obligation. Athreon’s AI speech technology works with or without an EHR. What’s more, setup is quick and straightforward, and there’s no need to purchase a microphone when you dictate using Athreon’s mobile app. Contact Athreon at 800.935.0973 to experience the industry’s best speech recognition technology backed by over 200 speech scientists and incredible support.