Shiraz Austin provides insights on how clinical voice-AI speech recognition could help to reduce DTOC

As the NHS continues to address Delayed Transfers of Care incidents, and their related costs, clinical speech recognition could help transform efficiency gains.

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, February 14, 2023 /EINPresswire.com/ — 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 (SR) 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, when data was last reported, there were 155,700 delayed days across the NHS – some attributable to the NHS, some attributable to social care, and some with joint responsibility. The estimated cost of these days totals £2,148,000.

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collaborate, and share information eliminate the low-hanging fruit of slow reporting and typing into cumbersome, often outdated, systems.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, this reduction in turnaround time, inaccuracies and errors could save the NHS up to £107,408 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, removing the bottlenecks that become obstacles to outstanding patient care and the best possible outcomes.”

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Shiraz Austin
Scribetech (UK) Ltd.
ukmarketing@scribetech.co.uk