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Voice Recognition Technology Improving Patient Care
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It is a typical in an outpatient imaging environment that a patient would present with
pronounced chills, worsening left lower abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, shallow
breathing, low blood pressure and a fever of 103.3 degrees.
Unfortunately, that is what physicians and staff at The Polyclinic’s outpatient imaging
center were faced with on May 15, 2006, when symptoms a patient had been experiencing
for three days suddenly began to worsen.
The patient’s physician, Dr. Stacy Tribble, referred him that Monday to the center, where
Spokane-based Inland Imaging interprets studies. Knowing a CT scan would shed significant
light on the abdominal pain he’d been experiencing since Saturday night, she requested a
STAT report, but no one could have guessed the severity of the situation.
As he finished his CT study, the 43-year-old man with no history of health problems became
gram negative septic from a diverticular abscess.
Day-to-day tasks for outpatient imaging physicians and staff consist of interpreting CT, MR
and other imaging exams and returning a prompt result to the referring provider. In emergent
situations such as this, it becomes exceedingly important that these exams are interpreted
quickly and the results communicated efficiently. Now, thanks to a new voice recognition technology
recently purchased by Inland Imaging, MedQuist SpeechQ, report turnaround is even more expedient.
SpeechQ’s features are designed to streamline reporting by automating common functions. Inland
Imaging radiologists can now dictate, review and electronically sign a report in a single
session-functions that previously were completed in three phases at different times.
In this case, SpeechQ allowed for the diagnostic imaging report to be handed directly to the
paramedics upon their arrival-only a few minutes after the patient was removed from the scanning
table. Dr. Tasneem Lalani, the Inland Imaging radiologist responsible for interpreting the CT
results, quickly completed the report and medics were given a CD of the images and a finalized
report to take with them to the emergency room.
The report was of great value in treating the patient’s diverticulitis. At present, CT of the
abdomen and pelvis with IV contrast is the diagnostic procedure of choice for assessing acute
diverticulitis. A subsequent CT on June 7 showed significant improvement of the patient’s colonic
wall thickening.
Inland Imaging’s full implementation of SpeechQ is scheduled to occur over the next six months.
The first group of radiologists to utilize this voice recognition technology has witnessed an 81
percent reduction in turnaround times.
Radiologist, Dr. William Keyes, had this to say about the technology, "It was a simple choice;
SpeechQ offered our radiologists increased productivity, turnaround time improvements, cost
reduction and more accurate reports. All of these combine to ultimately benefit our referring
providers and patients."
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