Dictate IT is offering to foot the bill for providing digital dictation technology at any NHS trust, in what it describes as a “no strings challenge."
The offer is being made to remove cost as a barrier to trusts making use of digital dictation to encourage them to change the way they manage transcription services.
“Dictate IT will make an offer to English NHS trusts where we will provide the platform and technology for digital dictation for no money, and will install and maintain at cost,” Mark Miller, managing director of Dictate IT, told E-Health Insider.
He said that digital dictation and transcription, when implemented to best industry practice, has the potential to save the NHS up to £1 billion a year.
“The NHS has to deliver £20 billion in efficiency savings and transcription services are one of the few areas that can really deliver big savings from back office functions with no impact on frontline services.”
He said a 1,000 bed hospital currently employs 200-230 secretarial staff, a figure that can be dramatically reduced through the use of technology.
“Transcription is an established industry and digital dictation can be effectively benchmarked to industry best practice,” said Miller. But he argued that to date relatively few NHS trusts have achieved these kinds of benefits.
The challenge, he stressed, was less the technology but using it as a tool to change current practice and workflows and effectively manage transcription services. “Our focus is on outsourced transcription and speech solutions that will allow a hospital to achieve these kinds of benefits.”
He added: “You should only consider you’re project a success if you achieve measurable cost reductions.”
Miller concluded: “I think the prize is significant and can be achieved without a reduction in services and standards. If you are not going to achieve efficiency savings in such a well proven area, where will you make them?”
Dictate IT was founded in 2005 and is only focused on the healthcare industry. The company is currently working with 27 NHS trusts.
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