mrecord's mscribe Transcription Management Suite Delivers Substantial ROI In A Short Time For VA Cancer Institute

CHALLENGE

Founded in 1981, Virginia Cancer Institute offers a comprehensive range of diagnostic, treatment, and therapeutic services, from the treatment of diseases of the blood to the long-term management of cancer. VA Cancer strives to provide patients with the highest caliber of innovative, state-of-the-art medical care available today.
Virginia Cancer Institute has 16 providers who are committed to working together with patients and family members as a team to provide compassionate, individualized care. The physicians and nurses reside at four locations in Virginia - Johnston-Willis Hospital, Atlee Medical Park, Ironbridge, and West End.

Medical documentation is very vital for this practice - every month, practitioners at VA Cancer meet with hundreds of patients in the office or hospital setting, resulting in plethora of documentation and transcription reports. Additionally, the physicians of Virginia Cancer Institute have conscientiously chosen to participate in a broad range of clinical research trials that evaluate new treatment options to determine if they are safe, effective and better than current standard care - another reason why medical documentation forms a very critical part of patient care at VA Cancer. In long-term management of cancer, the physicians rely heavily on medical reports for continual treatment of cancer patients.

The practice had on-site transcriptionists handling the transcription, but they were always overloaded. Says Diane Carnohan, Practice Administrator, "Our top priority was to ensure we improve our operational efficiencies, get quality reports on time, and go entirely paperless asap."

"We reviewed our current operations, we realized a huge part of the budget was dedicated to medical transcription, but our inhouse transcription team was unable to handle the volumes- obvious solution came to mind - outsourcing the entire gamut of records management, but we wanted a proven, completely integrated transcription management solution."

VA Cancer wanted their transcription management platform to fulfill the following criteria - topnotch quality and quick turnaround of reports, latest technology which is physician friendly, and most importantly ability to integrate with the VA Cancer's Varian EMR system.

SOLUTION

Following review of various vendors, VA Cancer engaged mrecord in July 2002. "The differentiating factor of mrecord was their cost-effective, all-encompassing service package. Moreover mrecord has track record of providing quality reports within short turnaround times, that is, within 8-12 hours," said Diane Carnohan, Practice Administrator.

IMPLEMENTATION

mrecord met with VA Cancer practitioners and their staff and trained them on mrecord's mscribe transcription management platform. Following installation and training of mscribe suite, mrecord provided latest Olympus handheld digital recorders that transform dictations into .dss files, which mscribe suite delivers via the Internet to mrecord's team of medical transcriptionists (MTs).

A couple more meetings were held and mrecord developed physician-specific report templates to be used by the MTs. All specifications were gathered and updated on mscribe's Template Management System for MTs to access it.

Integration of mscribe with VA Cancer's Varian practice management system and EMR was carried out simultaneously by mrecord's technical team. "Integration with any practice management software and EMR is critical to our delivery process as it sends across the medical reports seamlessly into the practice's EMR, " said Chief Technical Officer of mrecord. "Also our MTs are able to access patient demographics and schedules in a timely manner thus ensuring overall quality is maintained in the reports."

TODAY AT VA CANCER

		Using mscribe dictation platform, VA Cancer practitioners are able to send their dictations through a handheld recorder via Internet to mrecord without any manual intervention. The physicians can dictate on the move and do not need to make notes on papers, they need to just plug-in their digital recorder in their computers and mscribe dictation platform takes over from there and routes the dictation to mrecord. MTs at mrecord then transcribe the documents using mscribe Editor and Transcription Manager and after a two-level quality check, the reports are routed to mscribe Physician Portal.
		On the mscribe Physician Portal, the providers can access reports using their own IDs and passwords any time, anywhere. They can retrieve, edit, print, fax, mail from this portal - all within HIPAA guidelines and health information regulations. The report is finally sent in to their EMR system. The staff can track the reports on this physician portal. mrecord's 24 x 7 live support is just a click away for any technical and customer support.
		Diane said, "Our quality standards are high and under no circumstances we tolerate shoddy services. Following a couple of months of our association with mrecord, I can say, I am very pleased with their quality. We have gone entirely paperless and our process of documentation management has streamlined. " "We have been able to cut down on our expenses to a great extent and upped our operational efficiency considerably."
		mrecord's mscribe transcription platform immediately provided VA Cancer with a return on investment (ROI) through reduced transcription costs, reduced overheads, quick turnaround time, and consistent accuracy.
		The physicians were satisfied as they started having more time at hand to manage patients and enhance their care and also invest time in research. "mrecord provided training to our practitioners and staff; and mrecord continues to provide outstanding customer service and technical support. They have around the clock support which provides quick resolution of our problems" said Transcription Coordinator at VA Cancer
		The mscribe transcription management suite addresses current HIPAA regulations and ensures patient health information (ePHI) security through encryption. Through the entire delivery process, HIPAA regulations are complied with. Furthermore, as mrecord delivers reports in an electronic format and integrates them into VA Cancer's EMR system, their staff is able to keep patient reports continually up-to-date and HIPAA compliant.
		Diane summarized, "It was a good a decision on our part to outsource transcription management services to mrecord because we were able to leverage technology with mscribe suite and improve our operations in a cost-effective manner. Our physicians and staff have confidence that as we grow as a practice, we can depend upon mrecord to provide end-to-end quality services."

Learn more about our products and services at www.mrecord.com