KLAS, founded in 1996, has created a database of the opinions of health care executives, managers, and clinicians from more than 4,500 hospitals and 2,500 clinics. The information generated is current and is refreshed daily with new performance evaluations and interviews, so KLAS clients are able to see clearly how a vendor or product is truly performing.

"As more health care organizations see the value in speech solutions alongside integrated outsourced speech editing services, Nuance stands alone in what we're bringing to the market," said Peter Durlach, senior vice president, health care marketing and product strategy for Nuance. "KLAS' continued recognition of our product family, including PowerScribe®, Dragon®, NaturallySpeaking®, and EnterpriseExpress®, reinforces Nuance as the clear market leader in delivering end-to-end speech recognition technology and services."

Built by Radiologists for Radiologists

If particular interest to imaging radiologists is Nuance Dictaphone's new version of the PowerScribe Workstation, a speech recognition system for high-efficiency radiology reporting. PowerScribe automates the clinical documentation process and reduces the long turnaround time associated with the manual transcription of radiology interpretations, part of a $10 billion transcription industry in North America. "The success and continued market momentum of PowerScribe are a result of the product's genesis. It was built from the ground up for radiology, by radiologists and for radiologists," said Durlach.

"Our Dictaphone on-demand solution enables all health care organizations, no matter their size or IT budget, to dramatically improve their overall transcription process, driving down costs while also enhancing quality and turnaround time," he said.

Joe Thornton, director of imaging services, Medical West, an affiliate of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Health System, agrees. "Finding a solution to improve radiologist productivity, enhance report consistency, and deliver timely results was part of the escalating transcription and reporting pressures on our radiology department," he said. "We embraced speech recognition technology to streamline report creation and distribution workflow; and we chose PowerScribe because of the application's seamless integration into our existing IT environment, while delivering market-leading accuracy and cost savings."

Memorial Hermann Healthcare System, Houston, a large conglomerate with 16 inpatient and specialty outpatient facilities, now utilizes Dictaphone PowerScribe Speech Recognition services—all managed on one central system. "We needed to replace an unstable and labor-intensive, old way of doing business with a cutting-edge breakthrough technology," said Robert Weeks, director, information technology. It soon became clear to Weeks that this "breakthrough technology" was PowerScribe, which far exceeded the competition when comprehensively examined by Weeks and his colleagues.

Radiologists at Memorial Hermann are thoroughly impressed by their newfound efficiency. "It's night and day compared to what we had before. ... Now I dictate a report, sign it off, and it's out there—within a matter of less than a minute, an official finalized report is out there for the clinician to see," stated radiologist Justin Tholany, MD. Tholany, along with more than 150 other radiologists, currently self-edit 77,000 reports each month, representing 98% of total radiology report volume.

Durlach sums up the reason for PowerScribe's success. "This product stands up against the competition because we are continuously evolving its feature set with the end user in mind. Version 4.8 builds upon our commitment to provide busy, practicing radiologists with tools to automate documentation, streamline workflow, and improve patient care by ensuring critical test results are delivered quickly and accurately."