How Temple University Health saves 3,635 clinician hours per month with speech recognition

Temple Health has more than 1,550 clinicians and staff working together across five hospitals and a network of research institutions to drive clinical innovation. It is a major academic healthcare provider in Pennsylvania (USA).

Like teams at many other healthcare providers, Temple Health’s clinicians were spending hours of their workday completing documentation. As we know, clinician burnout is often caused by increasing clinical documentation workloads. To address this, Temple Health is implementing innovative solutions to optimize workflows. However, busy clinicians may not always have the time or support to familiarise themselves with these tools.

Dragon Medical One streamlines EHR documentation

Temple Health’s leaders successfully implemented Dragon Medical One , Nuance’s conversational AI powered documentation companion, for its clinicians by creating a dedicated training team.
This has led to streamlined EHR documentation processes and a monthly saving of 3,635 clinician hours through the Nuance speech-to-text technology.

They have a dedicated EPOCH team that trains clinicians to use their EHR more effectively, including Dragon Medcial One for dictation and step-by-step voice commands, helping even the busiest clinicians make the most of their new tools.

Request a free trial and demo of Dragon Medical One now!

From 1-on-1 training to training “flash mobs”

The EPOCH team delivers training for attending physicians, residents, fellows, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants in four stages, starting with basic dictation before moving on to step-by-step commands, inserting SmartPhrases, and voice navigation for Epic.

For clinicians who don’t have time for one-on-one training or group sessions, EPOCH organizes what Dr. Foda calls “flash mobs.” Visiting clinicians’ offices in between appointments, EPOCH’s trainers can deliver a full Dragon Medical One demo in under five minutes, showing them how to dictate a script of complicated medical terminology in just 20 seconds— something that would take four minutes to type. “The clinician’s jaw usually drops to the ground,” said Dr. Foda. “Once you connect with someone and clearly show them the real-time benefits of Dragon Medical they’re sold instantly.”

Impressive improvements

So far, the EPOCH team has completed around 300 training sessions. More than 650 clinicians now use Dragon Medical One regularly—a 297% increase in adoption since the program was launched in 2019. With more clinicians receiving the support they need to be productive in Epic, Temple Health now saves 3,635 hours monthly and is aiming for its clinicians to reclaim at least 43,000 hours annually.

“Dragon Medical One has changed my life. This was the first week in a long time that I was able to leave the office on Friday without any open encounters.”

Family Medicine Physician Delana Wardlaw

Team members are also continually offering positive feedback on Dragon Medical One. Family Medicine Physician Delana Wardlaw shared, “Dragon Medical One has changed my life. This was the first week in a long time that I was able to leave the office on Friday without any open encounters.”

This is just the beginning

By tracking usage and productivity in Dragon Medical Analytics, Temple Health has seen the number of voice commands used increase significantly, from 5,646 in April 2020 to 30,310 in April 2022. On top of dictation, voice commands can save an extra six seconds per interaction. To maximize productivity, Temple Health’s goal is to reach 50,000 voice commands per month, saving up to 1,000 additional hours annually.

And this is only the beginning of EPOCH’s journey with Dragon Medical One. Soon, the team will start delivering training in parallel with Epic onboarding to ensure every clinician is supported from day one. Temple Health has also committed to ongoing training, with refresher sessions for all clinicians six weeks after their initial onboarding, then every six months, to ensure everyone has the opportunity to grow their knowledge and dictation skillset.

Dictate and edit patient records and documents without touching the keyboard!
Find out how Dragon Medical One speech recognition software will help you work smarter!

Request a free trial and demo of Dragon Medical One now!