Sir Mortimer B. Davis - Jewish General Hospital

Introducing the first integrated dictation-to-transcription solution in Quebec healthcare

Located in Montreal, Quebec, the Sir Mortimer B. Davis - Jewish General Hospital is an academic healthcare centre and a major teaching hospital of McGill University.

Leading the way in delivering improved medical reporting

In 1996, the Jewish General Hospital decided to replace their old tape-based dictation equipment, which was lacking the resilience and features needed to establish a reliable and productive workflow and proving extremely costly to maintain. Consequently, the hospital looked to implement a site-wide digital dictation solution to roll-out advanced workflow management features, improve reliability and lower its overall documentation expenditures.

Laying a new, integrated foundation
That's how, in 1997, the Medical Records Department and Operating Rooms were equipped with DigiScribe and MedRite DOS from Crescendo: a phone-based, integrated dictation-to-transcription solution. "We wanted a true enterprise system, not only able to provide advanced dictation and workflow management features but also capable of supporting any future applications and cross-departmental integrations", explains Louise Tanguay, Chief of Medical Records.

Facilitating the dictation process
The mix of call-in dictation and voice playback functionality provided Authors with workflow flexibility unknown of at the time of tape dictation. "Tape handling hassles and resulting lost dictations soon became history, while Authors were finally able to record, play and edit dictations from any on-site phone. There was no comparison with the old infrastructure," continues Mrs. Tanguay. In 2001, DigiDictate-PC and DigiPlayer-IP were rolled-out in the Radiology Department, enabling Radiologists to record, play and edit dictation directly from their personal computers.

Louise Tanguay, JGH


Boosting the transcription workflow
The integration of dictation and transcription soon resulted in a more efficient documentation workflow thanks to the centralization of all voice files and the HL7 ADT Interface, which imported demographic information into a report without requiring user intervention. "In addition to reducing our report turnaround times, our new Crescendo system helped reduce the risk of errors due to manual data input, improving the overall reliability of medical data within the hospital." Turnaround times were even further accelerated in 2003 when the Medical Records Department upgraded from MedRite DOS to MedRite-XL, providing Transcriptionists with a wealth of productivity tools in a Microsoft® Word environment.

Adding speed to security
As for the supporting technology to transfer voice files between Authors and Transcriptionists, the Medical Records Department opted for the Crescendo Wide Area Service. This IP-based gateway allowed Transcriptionists to access data in real-time for immediate processing, whether office-based or working from home. "In addition to providing our site with increased workflow flexibility, CWAS turned to be the most secure transcription gateway available on the marketplace; with CWAS, we know that our voice files are never stored on a local PC, duplicated or aged offline. Why have your data put at risk with FTP or file-copy approaches when you know such proven solutions are available?", questions Mrs. Tanguay. 

Taking ER case management one big step ahead with wireless speech recognition

In 2007, the ER Department introduced a wireless document creation and management system that uses PDA devices and speech recognition to accelerate the delivery of critical information at the point of care. > Read case study

Sir Mortimer B. Davis - Jewish General Hospital
About the Hospital
  • 637 beds
  • One of the three busiest hospitals in Quebec with 22,000 patients admitted each year
Crescendo Users
  • 1000 Physicians
  • 20 Transcriptionists
The Installation
In the background