Transcription Service Exceeds Expectations, Keeps Work in U.S. and Enhances Productivity with Core Measure Reporting at WellStar

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1 Transcription Service Exceeds Expectations, Keeps Work in U.S. and Enhances Atlanta Health System Achieves Excellence in Report Timeliness and Quality while Boosting Physician Satisfaction

2 Atlanta Health System Achieves Excellence in Report Timeliness and Quality while Boosting Physician Satisfaction WellStar Health System s mission is to create and deliver high-quality services for the individuals and communities they serve. High quality is the organization s motto and service excellence drives every patient encounter every day. As an example, WellStar is the only health system in Georgia with two facilities named in Solucient s 100 Top Hospitals. Furthermore, the organization has been recognized in Working Mother Magazine s Top 100 and Companies that Care Honor Roll; another testament to their focus on employees, patients and partners. In keeping with their goal of high-quality and service excellence, the physicians and enterprise health information management (HIM) department of WellStar recognized the need for better quality in the area of clinical documentation and patient reports. In early 2006 the directive was clear: find a more current technology platform and service that would deliver faster report turn-around-times and better support patient care. WellStar s nursing staff was already using electronic clinical documentation tools; however the organization s medical staff was still several years away from point-andclick reporting. With this reality in mind, the organization decided to focus on narrative transcription as the preferred method for physician documentation. Shortly afterwards they began a formal search to find a new medical transcription technology platform and service partner. Selecting a Solution Before partnering with Webmedx, the organization s centralized transcription services provider was not meeting turn-around time. On average, patient reports were taking over 16 hours to be transcribed. Even the most urgent reports, such as history and physicals, took upwards of twelve hours to be turned around. Once reports were dictated and offloaded to the transcription vendor, it was hard to know when they would be returned. There was no way to see the status of reports or where they were in the production queue, mentions Kathy Cameron, RHIT, Enterprise HIM Director. Physicians became frustrated waiting for patient reports and HIM personnel had to contact the service to get information about the status of reports. About WellStar Health Systems WellStar Health System, Inc. (WHS), a Georgia not-for-profit corporation, is the parent corporation of an integrated healthcare delivery system known as WellStar Health System (the System) providing healthcare and related services in northwest metropolitan Atlanta. The major facilities of the System consist of: > 5 Acute Care Hospitals > 5 Urgent Care Centers > A Wellness Center > An Adult Congregate Living Facility > A Skilled Care Nursing Facility > A Residential Inpatient Hospice > 9 Satellite Diagnostic Imaging Centers In addition, WHS employs approximately 400 primary care providers, specialists, and advanced practitioners who are known collectively as the Well- Star Physicians Group and who practice as a medical group in the System s primary service area at approximately 76 practice locations. The System is one of 42 health systems in the United States accredited as a healthcare system by JCAHO. WellStar s more than 11,000 employees comprise one of Georgia s largest not-for-profit systems.

3 From a management perspective, Cameron and her administrative team lacked an easy method to validate monthly invoices and reconcile compliance with service level agreements and contractual commitments. Furthermore, the legacy platform did not successfully integrate with all the various WellStar systems. Moreover WellStar s information technology (IT) department had limited space for more hardware and few human resources for system support. The fact that Webmedx s web-native platform and hosted application service provider (ASP) model would result in space savings, easy system updates and vendor-provided IT support were important factors in the decision process. Webmedx met all these challenges and them some! Leading ASP technology Fast turn-around-time Quality reporting Management dashboard Transparent billing Easy to integrate Domestic workforce The Webmedx WellStar Partnership 75% to 85% of Transcription Outsourced to Webmedx CMS Core Measure Reporting Pilot Supported by Webmedx Solutions Used: > Enterprise Transcription Platform > Back-end Speech Recognition > Clinical Documentation Dashboard > Quality Analytics Rapid Turn-Around, Speech Technology and a Documentation Dashboard With Webmedx, we found a partner that consistently delivers and exceeds our expectation; they ve been doing so for over two years, remarks Cameron. Our physicians are very happy customers complaints and delays are the exception not the norm, she concludes. Furthermore, the security of a U.S. workforce relieves compliance concerns and measures up to the WellStar promise. 73% Reduction in Report Turn-Around-Times Cameron appreciates Webmedx s rapid report turn-around times, accuracy and high level of technology integration with other WellStar systems. Over the past two years the organization has seen a 73% reduction in report turn-around-time alongside a 99.4% average accuracy rate. Pre-operative history and physical (H&P) reports are returned within an hour and standard H&Ps are available within two hours on average.

4 The speed at which Webmedx correctly transcribes and returns reports has significantly reduced, if not eliminated, physician complaints and patient delays. To get the job done Webmedx has integrated back-end speech recognition technology and an around-the-clock, domestic workforce. Back-end speech recognition has helped them keep our turn-around times low and our overall customer satisfaction levels high, adds Cameron. Cost Savings with Back-end Speech Recognition Back-end speech recognition is integrated into the Webmedx transcription platform. As reports are dictated, the system automatically assigns a recognition rate for the dictator and the report. If the document passes the minimally accepted recognition rate, it is processed using back-end speech recognition and once completed by the computer, sent to a Webmedx medical editor for review. There is no front-end change for WellStar physicians. However there is a dramatic productivity improvement for Webmedx transcriptionists and important cost savings for WellStar. Every document processed using back-end speech technology saves time for Webmedx. Time savings are passed along to WellStar in the form of a monthly discount and reflected in their monthly invoice. Because system rules are driven by consistency of speech, even some of our worst dictators have qualified for the savings, mentions Cameron, including many of our foreign physicians. Furthermore, keeping tabs on speech-qualified dictations is easy thanks to Webmedx s clinical documentation dashboard. It s a must-have for a successful transcription outsourcing partnership. Remarkable Results Since 2007, Webmedx has served the clinical documentation needs of WellStar Health System. Originally implemented to improve accuracy and reduce turn-around-times, WellStar has achieved the following results: > 73% reduction in transcription turn-around time > 99.4% average accuracy rate > 100% domestic workforce With Webmedx, we found a partner that consistently delivers and exceeds our expectation; they ve been doing so for over two years. Our physicians are very happy. Kathy Cameron, RHIT Enterprise HIM Director Clinical Documentation Dashboard Keeps WellStar in Control At any time and from any location, WellStar s HIM management team can check the status of transcription activity; by individual report or entire workload. Also called the Webmedx Management Console, this clinical documentation dashboard keeps Cameron and her team up-to-date and in control. I can quickly see the time elapsed for a specific job and how much time Webmedx has left to get the job done, mentions Cameron. Managers can watch reports move from dictation to transcription, internal quality assurance (QA), external QA and completion. The ADT interface between Webmedx and all the various WellStar systems ensures that all demographic information is accurate and easily reportable within the Management Console. Furthermore, standard and ad-hoc reports are simple to create and use.

5 Beth Kost-Woodrow, BS, RHIA, Assistant VP and Chief Privacy Officer at WellStar feels secure knowing that the Webmedx platform includes extensive audit trails to track dates, times and specific users by report. Webmedx audit trails extend across all the WellStar locations. Throughout our health system we can see who accessed and viewed a document; a capability we ll need to comply with new HIPAA regulations, says Kost-Woodrow. Finally, if Cameron or one of her managers needs to re-prioritize a report they can easily do so using the dashboard. With two clicks of the mouse, the report is immediately assigned to the next transcriptionist. For WellStar s 15 internal MTs, the Webmedx platform is equally accommodating, flexible and easy to learn. The Webmedx Difference At the end of the day Webmedx delivers a new and refreshing relationship to medical transcription outsourcing; not only for WellStar, but for over 100 provider organizations nationwide. Webmedx is the fourth largest medical transcription services organization (MTSO) and the only company in the top 10 to employ a 100% domestic workforce. Cameron espouses the benefits of working with Webmedx: Collaborative, big-picture relationship Strategic, forward-thinking partnership Innovative use of all technologies, ours and theirs Always focused on improving performance For two years, Webmedx has demonstrated consistent performance, on-time service delivery, and high-quality clinical documentation. I ve never had to initiate a corrective action on their work, exclaims Cameron. Our partnership with Webmedx to automate CMS Core Measure reporting is just another example of their progressive, problem-solving philosophy. They are a forward-thinking transcription company; one that the healthcare industry needs and Wellstar demands. Mining Transcription For Core Measure Support Until now, transcribed documents have been largely unusable as a rich source of meaningful, discrete data. Webmedx is changing all that. The ability to mine discrete data from narrative reports is being integrated into Webmedx s latest platform, Enterprise5. Data derived from narrative transcription is called narradata and will help bridge the gap between physician choice and meaningful use of health information technology. For WellStar, narradata derived from the Webmedx platform will be used to support CMS Core Measure reporting for acute myocardial infarction (AMI). It s an automated process that electronically reads transcribed reports, finds specific key words and phrases, and then provides an electronic listing of cases containing these narradata elements. Eventually Kost-Woodrow hopes to replace core measures man hours with narradata from the Webmedx transcribed documents. Not only will our core measures nurses receive an action list of AMI cases every morning for their rounds as they do now, but they ll also see a boost in productivity as they eventually use the system to mine additional data from the narrative transcription, she concludes. Beth Kost-Woodrow, BS, RHIA, Assistant VP and Chief Privacy Officer

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