Nuance Communications today named the recipients of its Conversations Healthcare 2008 awards, recognizing exemplary use of Nuance’s speech-driven clinical documentation and communication solutions to drive innovation, streamline operational performance, and grow profitability for healthcare provider organizations. Recipients were recognized during a presentation at Conversations Healthcare 2008, Nuance’s user conference, held in Orlando, Florida, October 26-29.

2008 Conversations Healthcare Award Winners were:

• Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center (VCU) – Innovation Award -- The Innovation Award honors a customer who has implemented technology to solve business problems in a unique way. In the healthcare world of numerous patient handoffs, getting information to the right clinician in a timely manner can be challenging. In fact, miscommunication is a major driver of adverse medical events, responsible for 67 percent of malpractice cases and costing $40 billion each year. VCU addressed this problem by implementing Nuance’s Veriphy Critical Test Result Management (CTRM) solution. Using Veriphy, VCU decreased the time it takes to communicate life-threatening test results from one hour to 16 minutes. In combination with other departmental changes, Veriphy has helped VCU’s Level 1 Trauma Center speed patient care and become more reliable and timely in its communication of critical test results.
• Forrest General Hospital – Productivity Award -- The Productivity Award recognizes an organization that has leveraged technology to improve staff productivity. Many healthcare facilities have implemented speech solutions to reduce transcription costs, speed medical report creation, and increase overall productivity of medical transcription staff without impacting physician workflow. Since May, Forrest General Hospital has used Nuance’s Enterprise Express Speech System and has increased the average monthly transcription rate from 140 lines per hour to 220 lines per hour, with the top medical transcriptionist editing at a rate of 314 lines per hour. With the Enterprise Express Speech System, Forrest General Hospital is now processing 94 percent of its medical dictation through speech recognition technology, decreasing the average time it takes to complete a medical report by 36 percent, from 11 hours to seven. The organization has completely eliminated all outsourced medical transcription volume and estimates an annual transcription cost savings of $375,000.
• Baptist Memorial Health Corporation (BMHC) – Cost Savings Award -- The Cost Savings Award honors a customer who has applied best practices to significantly decrease healthcare costs. As radiology is the fastest-growing sector of healthcare—costing more than $100 billion annually and growing at a rate of 20 percent—solutions to improve productivity, clinical documentation, and caregiver communication are key to operational efficiency and budgets. BMHC has been using Nuance’s PowerScribe since February, and in nine  months has already saved more than $400,000 in reduced transcription costs. The network has seen an 81 percent reduction in radiology report turnaround time, from 11.4 hours to 2.2 hours.
• Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) – Power User Award -- The Power User Award honors the facility that best evokes outstanding business performance across multiple categories. By integrating Nuance’s healthcare decision-support, outcomes analysis, and speech and clinical documentation solutions, including RadPort for Radiology, RadWhere for Radiology, and RadCube for Radiology to improve its medical imaging order-to-results delivery cycle, MGH exemplifies the outstanding practice of "closed-loop radiology." Using these technologies, MGH has reduced inappropriate exam ordering, decreased turnaround time for patient reports, and improved tracking of patient outcomes. MGH has implemented these solutions to work in harmony with each other and, more importantly, with its expert caregiver team.
• Dr. Brian Zimmerman, Miami Valley Hospital – Rookie of the Year Award -- The Rookie of the Year Award is given to an individual who has made exceptional use of Nuance’s healthcare solutions and has bettered his facility as a result. Zimmerman, an emergency department physician, uses Dragon Medical to speech-enable his facility’s Epic EMR system. Using these solutions together, Zimmerman can include more detailed information in patient records, create medical reports that are instantly available to other caregivers, and eliminate transcription from his clinical documentation process. Miami Valley Hospital has saved $1.4 million annually in reduced transcription costs as a result of its physicians using Dragon Medical to document patient care.

"Nuance is pleased to recognize these top healthcare facilities for their strategic technology deployments and operational best practices that together enhance the quality of patient care and improve profitability for their businesses," said Peter Durlach, senior vice president of Nuance healthcare marketing and product strategy. "They are true champions of the healthcare industry and are key drivers to Nuance’s continued success in healthcare."