CIO —

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Boston, Mass.

BIDMC, one of Harvard Medical School's teaching hospitals, has annual revenues of $1.4 billion, 5,000 employees and handles more than 800,000 patient visits annually.

How Beth Israel Saved: Using voice recognition technology, BIDMC cut patient record turnaround time to under an hour and reduced transcription costs by about 50 percent, saving over $5 million since implementation in 2003.

Tools Used: Nuance's eScription computer aided medical transcription solution

Time Frame: Implemented from 2003 to 2005.

Be Ready for It

Since eScription is easy to use and maintain, BIDMC CIO John Halamka didn't need to fight for buy-in from higher ups. One pitfall he did have to overcome was preparing for the rapid adoption. Make sure to scale your servers and phone lines to handle a newer, faster solution, he advises.

Data Entry Ease

"Getting data into an electronic health record is hard but necessary," says Halamka. Clinicians often don't have the time to type complex notes, yet the hospital still needs detailed patient information to determine the appropriate course of care. After testing different solutions, BIDMC landed on voice recognition because of how easy it is for clinicians to enter their information into the system without having to spend time typing it into a computer.