In this article we explore some of the most common speech recognition errors.
Many doctors streamline patient documentation with the help of Dragon Medical. This is done by speaking into a microphone like the Nuance PowerMic III or a Dictation App. The software then processes the speech into words, that are then saved in the EHR system.
This certainly does not mean that this otherwise excellent system is not prone to errors.
Common Speech Recognition Errors Include:
- Excessively Added Words
- Pronunciation Errors
- Multiple Deletions
- Homonyms
- Nonsense Errors
- Spelling Errors
Taken together, all of the above errors can easily create a lot of confusion when a person is taking notes. Therefore, it would be well to ensure that proper care is taken when one is transcribing notes.
Apart from that, people also speak very quickly. Which can create problems for the speech transcription software when it is processing your voice to written speech.
Furthermore, many doctors do not take into consideration the fact that there is usually a lot of background noise. While people working in such noisy places have acclimatized themselves to the overall ambient noise levels, the same does not hold true for speech recognition software. It can easily make a mistake and capture background voices, along with the speech that is actually being transcribed.
Double Checking Data
Such errors are far more commonplace then they are assumed to be. Especially in a real time environment, as stressful and noisy as a hospital. Here, such issues can easily crop up all over the place, due to the fact that many medical staffers rarely bother to go through their notes, before inking heir initials on the finished file.
Here it cannot be stressed enough that speech recognition errors can easily affect patient treatment. This is why the service providers using this technology should always be extra diligent with regard to spotting any issues that may potentially crop up during the process of documentation. Scanning the notes as soon as they are transcribed is a great way of ensuring that those troublesome errors are kept to a bare minimum. Apart from that, the final copy should also be proofread at least twice, in order to ensure the overall reliability of the document.
Ultimately, education, training and due diligence are all essential components in making sure that the number of such transcription related errors is kept as low as possible.