As we look back on 2023, we are reflecting on the topics that have been front of mind for every healthcare professional. For many, 2023 was another year of intense pressure, limited resources, and searching for ways to work more efficiently and improve the patient journey.
Throughout the year, we have considered many of the most significant, complex issues facing the NHS today. From Delayed Transfers of Care to understanding the real cost—and value—of new technology, we have discussed how AI-powered speech recognition can dramatically improve workloads and, ultimately, patient outcomes.
But how much has changed since we first discussed these important topics? And how can speech continue to deliver measurable value to healthcare professionals across every discipline and specialism?
The continued pressure of bed shortages
Back in January 2023, we wrote about the relationship between dwindling bed stocks, high occupancy rates, and Delayed Transfers of Care. Initiatives like the Urgent and Emergency Care Plan laid the foundation for improvement over time, but almost 12 months later, the number of available beds across the NHS remains low.
In December 2023, the NHS Confederation was reportedly ‘worried’ about the continued lack of beds, particularly in Yorkshire and north-east England. With occupancy hitting heights of 95%, Trusts are left exposed to surging flu rates and seasonal illnesses. At the same time, high occupancy also drives infection risk, potentially worsening an already fraught situation.
Speech recognition solutions like Augnito Spectra have a role to play in accelerating safe discharge by reducing internal delays. When clinical workfllows and reporting are fast, flexible and accurate, patients can be safely transferred outside of the NHS, freeing up vital bed space for someone else.
A national emergency for mental healthcare
We also discussed the current state of mental health services in the UK, describing a flashpoint where the available resources need to be rapidly expanded to keep up with surging demand. Sadly, more recent news articles suggest a system that’s perpetually struggling to keep up.
According to The Guardian, the NHS Confederation described mental healthcare in England as a ‘national emergency’ in October 2023. Many NHS leaders observe that mental health has ‘slipped down the government’s set of priorities’, with patients suffering as a result. The situation is similar across the wider UK—in Scotland’s December 2023 budget, mental health funding was cut by almost £30 million.
For mental health professionals (MHPs), new ways of working can enable manual tasks to be completed faster and more flexibly. Crucially, a speech recognition platform, like Augnito, enables MHPs to capture notes in a way that’s natural and intuitive, so more attention can be paid to important patient interactions and those personal, often difficult and emotional conversations.
The continued evolution of patient data
Finally, we looked at patient data in its various formats across 2023. We discussed the importance of interoperability, sharing patient data securely to enable collaboration across multi-disciplinary teams (MDTs). We also tracked the evolution of patient data, including the changing nature of patient records and the heightened importance of accuracy and clarity.
Despite some controversy around privacy, 2024 will undoubtedly see new changes in the way patient data is stored, captured, shared and processed.
Augnito Voice Services and Augnito Spectra will continue to deliver wide-reaching benefits across healthcare with 99.3% accurate, AI-powered transcription that’s available anywhere, on any device. Our aim in 2024 will focus even more on how Augnito modernises the way healthcare professionals report, so, in turn, patient journeys and experiences can be modernised too. All in a single cloud-hosted platform that can be integrated into your EPR system for secure sharing.
Increasingly, patient journeys are becoming digital journeys—and the quality of the data you hold is key.
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See how Augnito Spectra delivers measurable benefits now while future-proofing the way you capture patient data. Request a demo or try Augnito Spectra for 7 days and see the benefits for yourself.
[London, 29 March 2023] – With the NHS struggling to meet the demands of an ageing population, complex discharge processes, and widespread bed shortages, new technology has an important role to play in safeguarding patient outcomes.
The past few years have been incredibly challenging for the NHS, with the pandemic and heightened demand bringing longstanding problems into sharp, urgent focus. Bed shortages continue to be a major issue, with British Medical Association data from December 2022 reporting that occupancy rates consistently exceed safe levels. Meanwhile, Delayed Transfers of Care (DTOCs) create unnecessary bottlenecks, with patients occupying beds when they are clinically ready to be discharged or transferred.
For NHS Trusts, this creates a significant, largely unnecessary cost – one that’s hard to immediately address by adding new bed stocks. That’s why Scribetech, the co-creators of AI speech recognition solution Augnito, are working to help Trusts understand the potential of innovative new technology.
“For decades, the NHS has tried to address bed stock and occupancy issues by adding more beds, but we have consistently seen that it’s almost impossible to keep up with demand” stated Shiraz Austin, Managing Director at Scribetech and Co-Founder of Augnito. “Technology and changes in ways of working have the potential to reduce occupancy rates and improve care in a way that’s more sustainable. But this transformation is only possible if it makes financial sense.”
Estimating the financial cost of DTOCs and the bed shortage is difficult. Department of Health figures put the cost of a DTOC bed at £400/day, while Age UK report 2019 costs of £346/day. Using a forgiving cost of £350/day, this implies a bill in excess of £54 million just for the delayed days in February 2020, when DTOC metrics were last reported.
Speech recognition technology like Augnito can’t immediately eliminate all DTOCs, but it can deliver consistent, incremental improvements to the workflows of multidisciplinary teams (MDTs). With real time dictation and transcription in any platform or dedicated desktop and smartphone applications, healthcare professionals can reduce the risk of delays arising from inaccurate records, lost records, and breakdowns in communication.
Austin continued: “The financial outlook is clear: the cost of new technology is significantly less than the cost of delays and low bed stocks. The cost of a single extra bed per day is 10 times the cost of an Augnito licence for a month. But that commercial reality is just one part of the picture. There’s a human cost that must also be considered.”
While delays and occupied beds affect every patient – and, indeed, the entire healthcare system including social care – some particularly vulnerable groups are disproportionately affected. December 2021 saw intensive care beds for children reach record occupancy of 89% across the country. Meanwhile, older patients are particularly at risk given the typical complexity of their discharge or transfer to other providers.
When paediatric beds simply aren’t available or elderly patients are kept on wards for weeks, even months after they’re ready to be transferred, their experience is resoundingly negative. They’re unable to receive the care that is appropriate, when it is required, in the right setting. In some cases, this comes with a very real and measurable impact on outcomes.
Austin concluded: “Augnito is designed to work for NHS Trusts – a cloud-hosted technology that’s significantly lower in cost than unnecessary delays and can be implemented quickly and easily. But it’s also designed to empower healthcare professionals and multidisciplinary teams to work efficiently, so they can act based on what patients need, without being limited by processes and old, outdated workflows.”
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Notes to editors
Full blog posts referenced in this media alert:
https://www.scribetech.co.uk/2023/02/28/how-speech-recognition-technology-can-support-a-national-bed-shortage/
https://www.scribetech.co.uk/2023/03/15/reducing-dtoc-on-vulnerable-patients/
For further information, interview opportunities or accompanying graphics please contact: [email protected]
About Scribetech and the Augnito solution – visit https://www.scribetech.co.uk/ for details and follow us on Linked-In.
Augnito is a secure, cloud-based, AI-driven clinical speech recognition product suite. It offers fast, easy ways to capture live clinical data on any device with 99.3% accuracy, support for multiple medical specialities, and no need for voice profile training. Augnito brings seamless speech recognition to daily workflows and third-party clinical systems, turning medical information into clinical documentation and making healthcare intelligence securely accessible wherever it’s needed. Augnito was co-developed by Scribetech, a clinical voice solutions innovator, fusing 20 years of transcription and digital dictation services to the NHS, speech-to-text, and clinical coding solutions for the healthcare sector, and its own speech recognition engine with advanced voice AI technology.
[London, 10 February 2023] – As the NHS continues to address and reduce Delayed Transfer of Care (DTOC) incidents – and their associated costs – speech recognition has the potential to deliver transformative efficiency gains.
With the healthcare system under unprecedented pressure, NHS Trusts are reflecting on key metrics associated with performance, cost, and quality of patient care. Delayed Transfers of Care (DTOCs) see patients continue to occupy beds when they are clinically ready to be transferred or discharged. This results in significant expense to the NHS, a lack of available bed stocks, and disrupted journeys for both the patients waiting for transfer and those waiting for beds.
According to Scribetech, UK distributors of Augnito, a cloud-based, AI-powered speech recognition solution, new technology and workflow transformation have the potential to significantly improve how DTOC is managed.
“DTOCs are an indicator of how healthy the health and social care systems are,” stated Shiraz Austin, Managing Director at Scribetech (UK) Ltd and Co-Founder of Augnito.ai. “When patients continue to occupy beds they don’t clinically need, there’s a ripple effect that stretches across the patient journey. This includes delays to treatment for new patients, as well as a considerable amount of distress for those needlessly held in hospital.”
The scale of the DTOC problem is significant. In February 2020, reports show, there were an average of 5370 people delayed per day across the NHS in England – some attributable to the NHS, some attributable to social care, and some with joint responsibility. Based on the Department of Health’s reported costs of an excess bed per day (£350 – £400), the estimated cost of DTOC was as high as £2,148,000 per day for that month alone.
However, this immediate financial impact is just one consequence of DTOCs. With bed stocks at an all-time low and occupancy at an all-time high, DTOCs directly affect the availability of treatment, making acute care when a bed is finally available even more costly and negatively affecting patient outcomes.
Innovative new technology has the potential to positively influence these outcomes – but Austin remains realistic about the results.
Austin continued: “It’s not that technology like Augnito can solve the DTOC challenge overnight. It’s that incremental improvements to the way healthcare professionals work, collaborate, and share information eliminate the low-hanging fruit of slow reporting and typing into cumbersome, often outdated, systems. And time saved leads to reduced cost, where budgets can be repurposed into wider, systemic changes.”
Augnito was designed in partnership with healthcare professionals to address their biggest challenges. This includes bringing real-time SR to the clinical systems used as part of the discharge and transfer process, allowing people to work faster and more flexibly.
Adopted widely, Augnito can deliver:
– Faster reporting time and fewer internal delays to patient discharge or transfer
– Reduced costs, which can be repurposed into growing bed stocks and community nursing
– Increased bed availability with less waste and lower occupancy
– A way to offset the removal of the Government’s Covid-19 DTOC funding
As standard, Augnito empowers healthcare professionals with advanced SR on any device – desktops, web browsers, and mobiles. With a flexible SDK and API, Augnito can also be integrated into existing systems for accurate, immediate capture into an Electronic Patient Record.
Based on February 2020 DTOC data, just a small reduction in turnaround time, inaccuracies and errors could save the NHS hundreds of thousands per month. Austin concluded: “Augnito creates a more seamless way of working for healthcare professionals, helping with considerable workloads and backlogs. But its real impact is on the NHS as a whole, improving financial drainage and removing the bottlenecks that become obstacles to outstanding patient care and the best possible outcomes.”
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Notes to editors
Read the full blog post here www.scribetech.co.uk/2023/01/31/can-the-advantages-of-clinical-voice-ai-sr-technology-help-reduce-dtoc
For further information, interview opportunities or accompanying graphics please contact: [email protected]
About Scribetech and the Augnito solution – visit https://www.scribetech.co.uk/ for details and follow us on Linked-In.
About Augnito India Private Limited – visit Augnito.ai.