Addressing a medical patient’s grievances by using Dragon Medical One
Though Nuance Dragon Medical One operates primarily as a support platform with robust dictation tools, we also understand the need to improve medical services across the board. No more is this apparent than the patient experience, and a huge aspect of translating it into the best possible experience is directly tackling the biggest patient problems.
The good news is, we aren’t just pointing out a list of issues medical patients have the biggest gripes with. Dragon Medical One dictation software can directly address the listed problems, allowing you to better streamline the patient-caretaker experience. For now, let’s take a glance at some of the biggest concerns patients face when seeking medical care.
Top Patient Problems
1: Time Waiting
You know the feeling. Scheduling an appointment, waiting to be called when you arrive at the doctor’s office, waiting in the room until you’re finally seen by staff. This is nothing to say about appointment scheduling (especially with specialist care providers) which can take weeks. On average, patients wait 18-20 minutes before they see their doctor.
However, this doesn’t account for cancellations, changed dates, and schedule delays. When it comes to health, patients dislike waiting, and it’s understandable. Some conditions and medical complications demand timely treatment, but often that’s not the case with modern American healthcare.
2: Doctor to Patient Time
What patients find worse than setting up an appointment with their caretaker is the actual time spent with the doctor. Rather, they feel visitations are simply too short for real, significant results. It is indeed frustrating because medical problems are a personal, frightening issue for many. It’s easy for patients to feel isolated with their medical issues, and thus there’s an obvious need to feel both comforted and provided for by a primary care provider.
But when visits average 10-15 minutes, patients feel looked over and that their time wasn’t well spent. This is exacerbated by increasing medical costs, even with insurance. But with administrative demands and additional patients to treat, doctors can afford no leeway, creating smaller care windows and frustrated patients.
3: Office Hour Limitation
Compounding the time issues in both scheduling and doctor visit time, other limitations hemorrhage patient care as well, namely limited office hours. Available days can vary depending on the primary care provider, and Americans routinely find it harder to have days off for important reasons, much less medical care.
Patients will always opt for caregivers that offer accessible times, especially those that offer remote and/or virtual care services. This is doubly important for patients in rural parts of the United States who face difficulties with location and/or getting to a medical provider.
4: Medical Errors
We’ve routinely discussed the fallout of medical errors and how they can perpetuate into a series of problems, ranging from regulatory penalties to caregiver complications. With the issues we’ve listed thus far, then, no patient wants to encounter errors related to their visits. These documentary blips can occur for a variety of reasons, due primarily to human error. Unfortunately, even a small misstep can lead to an incorrect prescription or dosage, improper treatment, and even lead to a health crisis.
5: Communication Issues
Another factor impeding the healthcare process for patients is issues with communication, be it before, during, or after a visit with a doctor.
Patients sometimes feel their time is not only inadequate with their provider but that said time wasn’t spent well. That they were not listened to or felt dismissed during the process. Healthcare providers want the best for their patients, but with time limitations, sometimes they can’t provide for every need. This, ultimately, makes a patient feel ignored. Others may express frustration with the process (setting up the appointment, unexpected delays, billing).
Confronting the Concerns
There’s a lot of pressure on healthcare providers to supply the best possible care to their patient base. More so, there are plenty of reasons for patients to feel stressed about their care, too. So how do we address it? By using the current tools at our disposal. To truly address the major concerns of patients, requires restructuring the healthcare system and its respective costs. We’ll hazard a guess and say that’s a little outside of your scope as a medical provider. However, you can still take advantage of time and cost-effective resources.
In some cases, clinicians take advantage of dictation software, but those non-premium tools are inaccurate and unreliable. This is where Dragon Medical One steps in, a dictation platform with precise accuracy and accessibility for all clinicians and healthcare professionals. But how does it address the patient concerns we’ve thus far discussed?
Let’s quickly go over them, one by one.
Time Waiting
While getting to patients is at the discretion of the provider, Nuance’s dictation software is all about saving time. Where you’d spend hours on record keeping and error connections, Dragon Medical One lets you sync patient details while they visit. That means reducing chances for delays and other slowdowns, so patients spend less time waiting in general.
Doctor/Patient Time
Once again, frustrations with the medical system come down to time or lack thereof. But since Dragon Medical One provides accurate dictation and, as mentioned, saves on hours lost to recording, doctors can spend more valuable time with their patients to provide better care.
Office Hour Limitation
With the hours saved, there’s a reduced chance clinicians and doctors will need to cancel on patients, or otherwise change appointments.
Medical Errors/Record Errors
There’s nothing worse than solving a cascade of problems due to medical errors. This happens during the recording process, where patient details are erroneously recorded and potentially lead to incorrect treatment paths. Inaccurate or otherwise lesser dictation software platforms are also root causes of these errors, adding to time lost rather than saving it.
As Dragon Medical One provides industry-leading accuracy with the correct setup, medical errors become a thing of the past.
Communication
The improvement in accuracy in both treatments and visits means addressing patient concerns of communication is far easier. Patients will feel their needs are being properly addressed, and avoiding medical errors translates to a better treatment path overall. And once again, the time your practice is saving by cutting down on redundancies translates to more possible time with said patients. While communication between patient and provider is still down to each experience and healthcare practitioner, having enough time greatly improves this one-on-one.
If you want to address patient concerns and problems, there’s no better time than now. Start your risk-free trial and start saving two or more hours per day after a five-minute install process.
