Case Study - The Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Download

Description:

The Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (CoCH)  was the first hospital in the North West to implement the English National Programme for IT (NPfIT) PACS in July 2006.  The Clinical Director for Radiology, the IM&T PACS Project Manger and the Radiology team quickly sought to build further on the benefits achieved by introducing speech recognition.  In the 2 ½  years preceding the introduction of PACS, the team had undertaken three measured trials of speech recognition.  All failed to demonstrate any benefit and were not implemented.  “Real time” reporting returned the words onto the screen too slowly, with low initial accuracy.  The CoCH clinical and IM&T team first became aware of TalkingPoint through a visit to Milton Keynes General Hospital.  On the strength of TalkingPoint’s success at Milton Keynes and a number of other hospitals, and a positive first hand appraisal of its strengths, CoCH embarked on another speech recognition trial, this time working with TalkingPoint for Radiology.  The then Clinical Director, Dr Rob Etherington, began a trial with one colleague in December 2006, joined by two more colleagues in January 2007.  Within a month other Radiologist colleagues were approaching the project manager asking to use the system and by February 2007 Radiology had commenced a full TalkingPoint implementation project.  The system was accepted because it had been seen to work and to deliver clinical benefit.  Key to its high adoption rate at CoCH was the almost instant high level of accuracy.  Memorising just a couple of commands enables a user to get by very effectively.  Add to all this its reliability, and you have a very rare commodity: an IT implementation that is genuinely welcomed by the clinical team.    The introduction of the integrated speech recognition system was proved to deliver a smooth reporting process with the unexpected benefit of further reducing turn-around times from the previously used digital dictation.  In addition CoCH realised significant savings on secretarial staff which were directly attributed to the implementation of speech recognition.  A reduction over two years of 7 to 3 secretaries was achieved; more than paying for the entire capital outlay of the speech recognition implementation, including product licenses, hardware, training and consultancy.      Commenting on the project Margaret Cosens IM&T Programme Manager says:  “In spite of whole hearted determination and best efforts together, we were unable to get past the trial phase in Radiology on three previous occasions.  The day TalkingPoint came out of the box we could see that we could make this work.  It doesn’t mean there were no teething troubles, but the TalkingPoint team stuck with us and resolved each issue that arose, using their considerable knowledge and expertise.” With the financial and clinical benefits having been quantified and proven through the use of TalkingPoint in the Radiology department, the Trust has now invested in a site-wide licence for all TalkingPoint Products, including speech recognition, digital dictation and speech to text, to enable benefits within different clinical scenarios. Hospital-wide roll-out of speech recognition and digital dictation is planned over the next 2 years.

Submitted By:

Clive Henson - GHG (Clive Henson)

Submitted On:

25 Oct 2011

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791.25 Kb

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77

File Author:

Ruth Palmer

File Date:

15 Nov 2008