Electronic health records (EHRs) coupled with speech recognition may be the route to take for healthcare organization, states a new study from the e-HIM workgroup of the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA).

Implementing speech recognition technology (SRT) may make healthcare clinicians and medical transcriptionists more productive participants in the documentation process and keep pace with increased demands, AHIMA says.

The workgroup outlines the benefits of the EHR-SRT system, including improved turnaround, reduced costs, error reduction and improved, timely decision making. As far as risks are concerned, the study states that risks include the cost in time to the physician-dictator in using front-end speech recognition, editing costs and technology mismatch.

"Speech recognition used directly by the physician-dictator becomes a viable option in the face of decreasing reimbursement, rising costs, growing labor shortages and increasing demands for more complete documentation provided in a more timely manner," stated Harry Rhodes, director of health information management products and services at AHIMA.