Pitfall Of Using AI Medical Transcription And Voice Recognition

AI stands for Artificial Intelligence, or the implementation of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior. Over the past few years, AI has contributed to treatment design, drug creation, digital consultation, CT scans, and medical transcription.

Though this technology is making a splash in all kinds of industries, it’s a big topic of discussion in healthcare–specifically regarding voice recognition software and medical transcription of clinical documentation. 

Let’s first look at why there is a large drive for AI medical transcription software.

What Is The Attraction Of AI Medical Transcription?

Here are the five main reasons technology companies are expanding their use of AI through medical transcription software and voice recognition.

Real-Time Clinical Documentation

Many medical transcription software companies focus on selling the idea that physicians can have a device listening to their patient consultations, and everything else happens in the background.

This is a desirable proposition because note-taking is one of doctors’ most time-consuming administrative tasks.

Avoid Time-Consuming Dictation

Medical dictation software has been available for clinical documentation for many years. But it’s still a time-consuming process that only saves the typing time and overhead of navigating EHR systems.

In theory, AI transcription doesn’t require detailed dictation of only the relevant medical records from a patient consultation. But we’ll get to how well they work shortly.

Scalable Solution

For doctors and clinics that rely on in-house human transcription services for their medical documentation, AI transcription is an enticing solution that allows them to scale beyond the limitations of an admin team.

If a medical clinic expands its services with additional doctors, the expectation is there wouldn’t be a shortfall of human scribes. But DataMatrix has an alternative solution for this.

Unintrusive Medical Transcription

Medical professionals are conscious of protecting their patients’ dignity and medical privacy, which is why most medical providers avoid having an additional non-medical person present during those consultations.

AI-powered medical scribes can solve this, but so does simple recording technology. Doctors can outsource the transcription by simply taking audio recordings of consultations without needing someone to be in the room.

Reduced Burnout

The unfortunate reality for physicians is that when they see their last patient of the day, there’s still a lot of work left to take care of all the paperwork. Clinical documentation is vital for legal, billing, and medical reasons, and doctors often spend many hours catching up with their notes after seeing patients.

That results in much longer workdays, adding to the burnout many doctors already have to deal with. AI technology does look promising to save time, effort, and burnout. Still, as you’ll see shortly, there are more limitations than most companies want to admit.

Let’s now turn to some of the risks.

What Are The Risks Of AI Transcription?

One thing you’ll notice when you review marketing material of AI systems for medical notes is that they never highlight significant limitations. And those limitations are substantial for the healthcare sector.

Accuracy And Consistency

AI medical transcription services must be programmed to learn and understand what is important information and what isn’t. During a routine checkup with a doctor, a conversation about a breakfast bagel the patient had might be completely irrelevant, and it wouldn’t belong in the patient consultation notes.

However, a similar conversation a few days after bowel surgery could be vital information to determine how fast a patient is recovering.

The question is whether doctors will feel comfortable trusting an AI transcription service to be able to tell the difference. It’s certainly a worry and concern to be aware of, and doctors would still have to check notes.

Overestimated Time Savings

One of the quick realizations for doctors switching to AI note-taking systems is that there’s a lot more involved in fine-tuning and using these systems. They are not out-of-the-box ready, placing an additional administrative burden on teams.

Doctors often spend more time correcting AI medical notes because the systems miss essential information and transcribe irrelevant details.

Ultimately, this means more admin time and fewer patient interactions.

Delayed Billing

Being more trustworthy of AI medical transcription software can also result in delayed billing. Insurance companies will only pay for treatments with the correct information and medical documentation.

And AI systems still regularly make mistakes that require time-consuming administrative tasks. Unlike having a recording used by a human scribe, doctors often have to try to fill gaps in memory, which poses additional risks to documentation accuracy.

Delayed Prior Authorization

Prior authorization requests for medication and treatments depend heavily on accurate data from patient visits, treatments, and test results. When medical transcription software doesn’t fully satisfy all data requirements, it can lead to delays in processing prior authorizations.

The result is a significant administrative overhead to correct medical documentation and gather the relevant information to update the authorization forms.
Now, let’s take a look at how the health industry has used voice recognition software and what limitations to expect.

What Is Voice Recognition?

Voice or speaker recognition is the ability of a machine or program to receive and interpret dictation or to understand and carry out spoken commands. Voice recognition is a form of AI, and much like the rest of artificial intelligence software, it is making a splash in the field of healthcare systems.

While there’s no denying that artificial intelligence has done great things for the industry, we’re looking critically at the very real threats that voice recognition poses for physicians and their practices.

Issues With Voice Recognition In Healthcare

Here are five of the most common issues found in medical notes after using voice recognition systems.

• Voice Recognition Is Not Immune To Replicating Human Error

Human-generated case histories are the root of healthcare data history. Adaptable and dynamic algorithms are needed for AI medical transcriptions to implement new records. This means more time and precision on the physician’s part to integrate any new information.

A specific example of this is voice recognition software. Though on the rise in the healthcare systems industry, it poses quite a big threat. While it can help physicians gather patient information quickly, it can’t quite pick up on the intent of the physician.

Errors as small as missing a punctuation point can have detrimental effects on the medical documentation of patient visits and health records.

• Training Complications With An AI Medical Scribe

Yes, artificial intelligence is, in fact, intelligent. However, these medical ai scribes‘ wealth of knowledge must come from somewhere. The majority of AI is data logistics or machine learning algorithms.

Advances in data sets are what fuel all of its changes and advancements.

Not only that, but these data sets must be accurate and concise to be effective. Even with all of the right patient data, the quality of that data can still be compromised. In summation, the time and intricacy that goes into training the technology is an entire project of its own.

• Relying Too Heavily On Voice Recognition

Quite literally, VRS picks up on spoken words and documents them directly into the system. That’s it. A machine can enter the words of the physician, but much like Siri on our phones, the results are not always accurate. Not to deviate too much, but we wrote a related article comparing medical transcription vs vrs. If you have more time

A physician’s notes need to be completely accurate, as concise medical documentation is vital to enhance patient care. With an error rate of over 5%, voice recognition and medical transcription software just aren’t cutting it.

This error rate requires a human to go back in and check for inaccuracies, taking up even more valuable time from our physicians.

AI wasn’t created, at least not yet, to cure cancer or to completely supersede the need for doctors. It was created, however, to carry out minor, discrete problems and processes that create value. However, relying too heavily or too completely on artificial intelligence in voice recognition software can be quite problematic.

• The Great Ethics Debate

Artificial intelligence in healthcare is often meant to relieve physicians of some of their never-ending workload.

However, the ethical debate that comes into question is, to what extent will AI replace physicians altogether? As we know, AI has a long way to go. In its current state, the option for machines to replace doctors entirely is not plausible.

When it comes to voice recognition, the discrepancy grows even more. For example, say that the voice recognition software picks up the wrong words from the physician.

The physician said the correct thing, but the software documented something else. Who is ultimately responsible for that error–the machine or the physician working with it?

• Voice Recognition Interference Of Patient-Provider Relationship

A healthy balance between technology and doctors is essential for optimal patient care.

Here’s what we mean by that: Much like any other industry, humans want to feel cared for and understood. A machine simply can’t understand a patient’s specific needs like a physician can.

In other words, even the best, most intelligent technology in the world can’t replicate the sympathy and care of a human being.

Electronic health records (EHRs) are a perfect example of patient-provider interference.

EHRs tend to cause an interference with the patient-provider relationship, as they suck time away from already-limited appointments. They also prevent clinicians from picking up on non-verbal cues by keeping their eyes locked on their computers instead of on the person in front of them. This is also a good example of EHR transcription being much better with a scribe.

Alternatives To AI For Your Practice

At the end of the day, the most important aspect of a physician’s job is to provide the utmost care to their patients. As we now know, a huge factor that goes into proper patient care is the health of the patient-provider relationship.

Likewise, if a patient doesn’t feel that their physician cares for and properly assesses their needs, the patient-provider relationship will likely suffer.

What’s worse is that systems like voice recognition and AI transcription, meant to save the physician time, are actually making the job of a physician more difficult. Voice recognition misses out on huge aspects of human speech, such as the intent of the physician.

Instead of saving physicians time, the physician will likely have to go back into the patient data collected by the system and edit as needed.

An alternative to using voice recognition in your practice is hiring a medical transcription service company for these time-consuming services. Medical transcriptionists are humans who are trained to understand and transcribe the intricate details of a physician’s diagnosis.

What’s more, they can decode all of the aspects of a physician’s speech that a computer simply cannot–making your transcription more accurate and reliable.

Call Our Team At DataMatrix To Find Out More

Artificial intelligence is undoubtedly on the rise in the healthcare world. However, the risks of completely immersing the medical world in AI pose potential threats to the healthcare industry and, more specifically, to patient care.

To learn more about medical transcription services and how they can help improve your practice, reach out to one of our professionals today.