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Using dictation solutions to increase quality of care

The facts

The customer
Dr. Spyridon Kantas, M.D., APG - Internal Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess HealthCare, Boston, USA
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The solution
SpeechMike Premium Air Wireless Dictation Microphone
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AirBridge Wireless Adapter
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When it comes to workflows at his office in Andover, MA, Dr. Spyridon Kantas is never content with the status quo – instead, he’s always looking for ways to refine and optimize processes to best serve the needs of his patients.


As a primary care physician with more than 20 years of experience, he transitioned approximately 3 1/2 years ago from private practice to join Beth Israel Deaconess HealthCare, a teaching hospital affiliated with the Harvard Medical System with 200+ physicians.  As he transitioned to this new environment, some of the tools and best practices Kantas has used over the years remained consistent – one being a Philips dictation microphone. A proponent of speech recognition tools for many years, Dr. Kantas says it’s key to getting the most out of his busy schedule and providing the best care possible.  

A doctor’s conundrum – How to give full attention to both patients and documentation?

As is the case with most physicians, Dr. Kantas’ days are often filled with back-to-back patient appointments, where he always strives to provide his undivided attention during their limited time together. However, part of his responsibility as a physician is also to capture thorough notes in order to maintain comprehensive documentation with the practice’s Electronic Healthcare Records (EHRs). Doing both at the same time used to pose a challenge, until he added his Philips SpeechMike Premium Air wireless microphone to his daily workflow. 

“I like the SpeechMike because it helps me work faster, and my patients like it because it allows for better engagement with them,” he explains, adding “Microphones can make people feel nervous, but with a device so small and unobtrusive, I can mitigate their discomfort by explaining the process while also recording everything they’re saying. I sometimes even show them the notes as they appear onscreen, and I think they appreciate it when I explain how this ultimately helps me to help them.” 

Every minute matters – every minute can make a significant difference in what you can accomplish in a work day and can help you serve patients better and more efficiently.

Dr. Spyridon Kantas
M.D., APG - Primary care physician at Beth Israel Deaconess HealthCare

Making the most of the day when “every minute matters” 
In the healthcare field, Dr. Kantas points out, “every minute matters – every minute can make a significant difference in what you can accomplish in a work day and can help you serve patients better and more efficiently.” To help them focus on their patients during visits, many physicians in the Beth Israel Deaconess system enlist the help of clinical scribes to take notes and get them recorded and filed by the end of the day. Dr. Kantas also sometimes works with a scribe, but says he finds using the SpeechMike a cost-effective and streamlined way to compile his notes. “The device is a very economical tool, and it’s a direct extension of my own thinking processes without any need for clarification or interpretation, which can sometimes happen with scribes,” says Dr. Kantas. After recording his voice notes to his laptop, he can review them, re-dictate if needed, and add further comments where appropriate to make the most of his time with patients to create thorough, well-articulated Clinical Documentation.

Enabling increased accuracy and flexibility 

Another benefit Dr. Kantas has found using the SpeechMike is its capability to deliver accurate results while accommodating for variances in speech patterns, dialects, and more. Together with Dragon Medical speech recognition software from Nuance, Dr. Kantas says using the wireless dictation device helps capture and convert his voice recordings with extremely high text accuracy.

“Even though I haven’t yet fully explored all the capabilities of the SpeechMike and including the fact that English is my second language, I’m able to achieve up to 95% accuracy,” he estimates, “and I think that could be even higher with increased use.”  Dr. Kantas continues to hone his dictation skills and is always seeking ways to improve upon his notetaking process. Most recently, he incorporated AirBridge wireless adaptor to his SpeechMike Premium Air which, at the size of a quarter, allows for mobile capabilities to help him quickly move between patient exam rooms, while maintaining connectivity to his dictation processes. 

In a field like healthcare where time is limited – but tedious tasks such as documentation are mandatory – having tools to execute them with both speed and precision are vital. Helping dedicated healthcare professionals like Dr. Kantas avoid mistakes, work faster and more efficiently, and spend more quality time with patients is what Philips Dictation strives to do every day as technology becomes a more indispensable resource in the industry. As tools such as the SpeechMike Premium Air and AirBridge continue to evolve, so will the ability to provide the best patient care possible, which is the ultimate goal of physicians everywhere.

The solution

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