Using Dragon Medical One (DMO) and WinVoiceWeb frees up 40% more patient care time for NHS Lanarkshire’s SLT team
Voice Technologies changed my working life completely [and] significantly improved the SLT service in NHS Lanarkshire for patients and staff.
Collette McCallum
Speech and Language Therapy Site Co-ordinator,
University Hospital Wishaw
Background
NHS Lanarkshire is Scotland’s third largest health board, serving 655,000 people across rural and urban areas. Around 12,000 staff work in communities, clinics, offices and three district general hospitals.
Its Speech and Language Therapy (SLT) service was struggling with an outdated document workflow that affected patient waiting times and staff morale. Therapists dictated letters and reports onto analogue tapes, passed them to site secretaries for typing, checked drafts by email, then returned them for printing and posting.
In practice, each of the three sites had only 20 hours of admin support for acute and community teams, leaving staff unable to keep pace with demand. Turnaround times grew, and therapists increasingly typed and printed their own reports. Vacancies could not be filled and limited office space prevented adding more admin staff. Remote working with analogue dictation also raised governance concerns.
The pressure reduced clinical capacity and heightened stress, particularly in one hospital team that lost all admin support for a sustained period. A more efficient system was needed to free up admin time, reduce waiting lists and ease pressure on staff.
A revolution in documentation
Voice Technologies assessed the workflow and recommended Dragon Medical One (DMO) with WinVoiceWeb. DMO enables fast, accurate dictation for clinical documents, while WinVoiceWeb – developed with the NHS – provides a streamlined, web-based system for producing and distributing letters and reports.
Initially adopted for report-writing, the SLT teams quickly realised the benefits for case notes and management reports. Therapists now complete reports in half the time, working remotely or on site using hand-held microphones or headsets.
Admin staff have cut report-processing time by up to 80% and 40% on average across 10 users, with overall turnaround time reduced by 55%. This frees staff to process referrals and manage calls more efficiently. Reports are now instantly available on Clinical Portal and emailed directly to GPs. The combined system has transformed SLT workflows and improved morale.
Excellent support and advice
Voice Technologies supported the SLT management through the decision-making initial stages, explaining how the DMO and WinVoiceWeb system works, how to ensure a high level of return in terms of efficiency and productivity, and how it is tried and tested to integrate seamlessly with other NHS systems.
We then guided the admin team and therapists through the change over from analogue to digital. We provided tailored training, answering all their questions and working at the therapists’ own pace and level of IT understanding to help them overcome any fear of change by explaining clearly how to use the new system and training users to get the very most out of it.
*Average recorded by 10 users over one year.
