Capitol Ear, Nose and Throat benefits from WinScribe treatment

With 3 office locations in North Carolina, Capitol Ear, Nose and Throat has been treating patients with medical and surgical diseases of the ears, nose, throat and head and neck for over 23 years. When they were looking to update their tape system to help reduce their transcription turnaround time, they turned to WinScribe.

The Challenge - Increase dictation productivity

With 6 doctors working across 3 offices, the Capitol Ear, Nose and Throat clinic treats on average over 200 patients every day. The doctors are supported by 3 transcriptionists - 2 remotely and 1 in the Raleigh, North Carolina office.

Delays were being encountered when having to courier tapes out of the office and a solution was therefore needed that could not only decrease document transcription turnaround time, but would also bring them into the forefront of digital dictation technology. Sue Powers C.M.A, Transcription Manager at Capitol Ear, Nose and Throat admits, “We were very aware that our 20 year old analog system was becoming obsolete and that the tape system was on its way out. We knew our system needed updating.”

Although the clinic uses technologically advanced systems in other areas of its operations, it became apparent that in the area of transcription, its system was somewhat lacking. “We have been using electronic records for many, many years and we wanted to stay ahead of the curve by also updating our dictation and transcription process - that was one office operation we hadn’t really updated,” explains Sue.

The Solution – WinScribe

Sue began researching several different digital dictation systems. “We had talked about upgrading our transcription system to digital dictation because we knew we could be working much more efficiently,” says Sue.

After a careful evaluation of the different options, it was decided that WinScribe best suited their requirements. “The WinScribe system just seemed to be the easiest system to use and not only would it integrate easily into our existing programs, allow for remote working and decrease document turnaround time, but it was the most cost- effective solution,” she adds.

The decision was made to roll-out the solution company wide at all 3 office locations and the implementation, carried out by Tekton, a North Carolina based supplier of WinScribe, was virtually seamless. “I was amazed how easy it was to implement WinScribe, particularly considering we have doctors who had been using the old system for a number of years and were a little hesitant about switching to a new system.”

The Results - Increased efficiency!

Remote working
Since implementing WinScribe in January 2005, Doctors at Capitol Ear, Nose and Throat have embraced WinScribe and really like using the system. They dictate their patient reports using WinScribe’s Pocket Author application for PDA dictation and benefit from being able to dictate anywhere, any time.

“My overall impression is that WinScribe is a great software application. One of my favorite features is the ability to dictate from home. I think it is an excellent piece of software and really helps improve our efficiency,” says Dr David. A Clark.

Faster report turnaround
The biggest benefit for the Doctors has been the dramatic decrease in their report turnaround time. With the old tape system, the tapes had to be couriered off site to be transcribed, causing major delays of up to several days to a week or more. With WinScribe, the patient notes can be transcribed and sent back to the doctor much faster and more efficiently. According to Sue Powers, “We can often have notes transcribed before the patient even leaves the office!”

Work sharing
Another important benefit is WinScribe’s remote working and work sharing capability and being able to share jobs between transcriptionists if one of them is unavailable. “With our previous system, the need to courier some of our work off-site meant we could encounter delays of up to a week or more. With WinScribe, we no longer encounter those delays!”

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