BURLINGTON, Mass.--Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) announced that seven customers have been named Voice of the Customer Award winners from the 10,000 healthcare provider organizations using Nuance’s clinical documentation solutions. The awards, recently announced at Nuance’s 13th Annual user conference, “Conversations,” recognize leading hospitals and health systems that have improved quality of care, reduced costs and accelerated adoption of electronic medical records (EMR) using intelligent systems built on speech recognition and clinical language understanding.

“These winners are among the many prestigious provider organizations who use our intelligent clinical documentation systems to provide fast, accurate and more efficient use of clinical information across the care continuum to keep patients safe and comply with escalating regulatory and payment changes in the healthcare industry,” says Janet Dillione, executive vice president and general manager, Nuance Healthcare division.

2013 Award Winners by Category:

Improved Patient Care through Innovative Use of Technology

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), Pittsburgh, PA – UPMC operates more than 20 hospitals and 400 outpatient sites in the U.S., pushing the limits of IT and innovation wherever it can, including through the use of Nuance’s core healthcare solutions on a massive scale. As a development partner with Nuance, UPMC recently standardized technologies and processes in its electronic medical record (EMRs) to improve patient care and lower operational costs. The health system streamlined documentation and workflow for providers, improved communication and staff efficiency, and reduced turnaround time of clinical documentation. UPMC uses Dragon Medical speech recognition across multiple EHR platforms, one transcription platform — Nuance eScription — and PowerScribe 360 Reporting for radiologists. In addition, more than 400 doctors use Nuance’s mobile speech recognition technology to dictate clinical documentation anywhere, anytime to remain focused on patient care.

• Watch video - Nuance and UPMC’s development agreement

Protecting the Patient

Barnabas Health, West Orange, NJ – New Jersey’s largest integrated delivery network is a step ahead of most hospitals, receiving Joint Commission Top Performer on Key Quality Measures™ accreditation for outstanding clinical outcomes. This complex health system used Clintegrity 360 | Quality Measures and Performance Analytics to identify broken processes across its six hospitals, improve accountability and achieve performance improvement goals to comply with CMS core measures and other reporting requirements. Barnabas reduced hospital-acquired complications (HACs) in the health system by 73 percent in two years and achieved 100 percent compliance for all pneumonia core measures in the emergency department as part of this program. As a result, Barnabas is well prepared for regulatory initiatives where clinical documentation impacts financial performance including ICD-10, pay-for-performance, value-based purchasing and accountable care.

Mariners Hospital, Tavernier, FL – This critical access hospital, an affiliate of Baptist Health South Florida, leveraged Nuance’s PowerScribe 360 | Critical Results solution to help radiologists identify and communicate critical medical results quickly and consistently to alert patients and physicians to high-risk situations where immediate follow up medical attention is needed. This proactive methodology has helped them save patients’ lives by escalating communication of risky results 24 hours a day, seven days a week even when first attempts go unanswered. Mariners Hospital has improved quality management and physician satisfaction scores, and provides complete documentation of high-risk cases to support medical and legal needs.

Inspiring Use of Technology

EZDERM, Naples, FL – This mobile EHR vendor has created a 100 percent paperless application for the iPad to humanize healthcare and shift attention back to patients and away from technology. The solution uses voice, gesture and touch to simplify the physician user interface and save time on clinical documentation. With “voice stamps” and 3D Body Maps, doctors can document patient encounters in three to four words, instead of 15-30 clicks needed in typical electronic systems to document a problem. Clinical records automatically generate bills, allowing physicians to focus on patients not paper or processes. This innovative technology, created specifically for dermatologists, is powered by Nuance’s cloud-based medical speech recognition.

• Watch video - EZDERM CEO demonstrates how voice simplifies patient documentation.

Driving EMR Adoption through Innovation

Advocate Health, Barrington, IL – This Nuance customer achieved 100 percent physician adoption of its EMR using Dragon Medical 360 | Network Edition to overcome staff frustrations and provide 1000 doctors and other providers with a simpler way of entering accurate and timely clinical documentation. Advocate Health saved $1 million in transcription costs and reduced turnaround time from 72 hours to near real time. Immediate benefits realized were quicker billing, turnaround time and improved eligibility of documentation.

Improved Healthcare Delivery

Central Illinois Radiological Associates (CIRA), Peoria, IL – One of the Midwest’s largest providers of radiology services, CIRA implemented Nuance’s PowerScribe 360 Reporting to grow its business and extend its services to multiple rural facilities efficiently. CIRA leveraged a unified workflow and common dictation platform for radiologists wherever they practiced, streamlining reporting without having to locate radiologist in each area. This approach maximized 100 percent of radiologists’ time, reduced report turnaround time from days to near real time and eliminated manual processes in revenue cycle management.

The Ottawa Hospital, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada –This flagship institution is one of the largest teaching facilities in Canada. To improve patient safety and speed access to clinical documents in its EMR, The Ottawa Hospital implemented Dragon Medical 360 | Network Edition across the departments of medicine, surgery, ophthalmology and allied health. This reduced turnaround time of outpatient records from 14 days to immediate availability in charts, providing fast and easy distribution to other providers in the circle of care. With immediate savings of $1.5 million, the Ottawa Hospital projects $11 million in five years by replacing central transcription.

Conversations is an annual conference hosted by Nuance that attracts hundreds of customers to hear the latest technology advancements in the healthcare division, clinical documentation strategies, strategic roadmaps and insights from industry leaders. This year one of hottest topics was how to leverage technology to adapt and comply with regulatory requirements including Meaningful Use, ICD-10 and Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) models.

For more information about the Voice of the Customer Award winners and how Nuance’s intelligent systems in healthcare can improve patient outcomes and reduce costs, please visit t www.nuance.com/for-healthcare.

Nuance Communications, Inc

Nuance Healthcare, a division of Nuance Communications, is the market leader in creating clinical understanding solutions that drive smart, efficient decisions across healthcare. As the largest clinical documentation provider in the U.S., Nuance provides solutions and services that improve the entire clinical documentation process — from the capture of the complete patient record to clinical documentation improvement, coding, compliance and appropriate reimbursement. More than 450,000 physicians and 10,000 healthcare facilities worldwide leverage Nuance’s award-winning, voice-enabled clinical documentation and analytics solutions to support the physician in any clinical workflow and on any device. For more information, visit www.nuance.com/for-healthcare/index.htm.

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