Until February 2004, I dictated my progress notes and had someone transcribe them. This helped me use my time efficiently, but I was paying $1,600 a month to the transcription service. Essentially, I was paying the equivalent of a mortgage payment, and it was tearing me up inside. One day, finally, I'd had enough. I decided to check out speech recognition software.
I bought a copy of Dragon NaturallySpeaking Medical, version 7, and loaded it onto my IBM ThinkPad computer. Using a headset microphone that I'd found in a local office supply store, I performed the initial training with the program and then started dictating all of my patient progress notes. The software wasn't perfect, but it was good enough for my purposes. And as I've learned more about how to use speech recognition in my office, it has become increasingly accurate.
I now document visits in about the same amount of time that it used to take me to dictate notes for the transcriptionist. I don't proofread every word afterwards. Rather, I check for content, and one of my staff members skims the note, looking for obvious typos and nonsense words. Because she may miss a few, I add a disclaimer at the end of each note, stating that my dictation was transcribed by computer.
Here are a few nuggets of knowledge I've picked up along the way that can help you take maximum advantage of speech recognition.