Is Dictation Making a Comeback?

22
May
2012

Don Smith

For more than a decade, I have been hearing that dictation is going away, yet it is still here and going stronger than ever!  Young attorneys, doctors, executives, and many other business professionals grew up typing and prefer to type, so why should they dictate?  With speech recognition, who needs a transcriptionist or secretary?

The reality is that this is the same argument that was being made 20 years ago when young executives said we prefer to just write things out with a pen!  Even the Egyptian pharaohs knew it was a better use of their time to stay focused on those priority tasks that only they could do, and instruct (dictate) things to those who are better suited to complete certain tasks than they were.

There are many formulas for proving that dictation is simply faster than any other method of document creation – bar none.  Even at relatively low rates of speech such as dictating at 200 wpm versus typing very quickly at 100 WPM, the minimum savings are normally at least a 50% reduction in time required for executives which allows them to focus on other revenue generating tasks. Still, this is not the entire story.  Is there any quicker or more efficient way for an attorney to book an appointment than to pick up a portable, say “please book an appointment with Fred for me” and set it back down in the cradle?  Or, is there a faster method for a doctor to generate a report than dictating it as they walk from one patient room to the next?  I would be hard pressed to come up with one!  An argument I frequently hear is that it is easier to compose on paper than it is via voice, but that very skill honed by hours of dictation is one that is very desirable for an attorney in a courtroom, a top level executive making a presentation in the board room, or a doctor explaining a complication to a family member!

I recently had a discussion at my niece's sixth birthday party with a doctor who went from dictating to using an EMR template system.  She said a year ago she was able to see 14-16 patients a day.  A year after the switch, she has recovered some productivity, but is still only able to see 10-12 patients a day!  Still, she now spends more hours at the office because of the amount of time she spends typing and clicking through templates.  This is a story I've heard over and over in the last five years.  A recent study showed that doctors may be able to keep up with their previous patient load after an EMR implementation because time savings in other areas, but the amount of time spent on documentation more than quadrupled!   Today's dictation and speech recognition technologies can seamlessly integrate with EMR or document management systems to return that time spent documenting things to the author and still take advantage of the other benefits of those systems.

Dana LaRieal Wilson, IT Project Manager at Waller Lansden Dortch and Davis, says it well in a recent post on LinkedIn.  “We introduced […] digital dictation to our Users a few years ago and it pretty much sold itself. We started with a small tester group and those Attorney and Assistants loved it so much that the word spread and we started getting requests from people who didn't traditionally dictate (the younger Attorney's). The reason for this swing in mindset was the Attorney's ability to do things with the device that they traditionally didn't do like dictate their time, record depositions/meetings, dictate a quick letter and have it ready for them when they return to the office. We only deployed to individuals with PDA devices, which eliminated the investment of new devices, and their Assistants. The Assistants liked the switch to digital dictation because the quality of the voice on the recording was better than that of the analog tape. It also allowed them to receive a dictation while the Attorney was outside of the office, which allowed the Attorney to utilize those precious billable hours in a more efficient manner [sic].”

Dana went on to say that “[t]he newer/younger Attorney's have found new and creative ways to use the device and some have even started to throw traditional dictation methods into the mix. All in all I don't think ‘dictation’ will go anywhere any time soon, it has just evolved with the times.”

If your company is focused only on eliminating administrative time with technology, they are missing the point!  The point is to allow your top revenue generating employees to spend as much time performing activities that generate as much revenue as possible- that is why administrative staff was hired in the first place!  Yes, it is possible to reduce time spent on those tasks through technology, but the goal should be to keep administrative overhead to a minimum while maximizing the amount of time your executives spend doing what they were trained and hired to do.  This is exactly why dictation exists and why it will not be going away any time soon.