A community of 30,000 US Transcriptionist serving Medical Transcription Industry

Be careful - more landmines - MME

Posted: Nov 25, 2013

It's probably my "conspiracy theorist" mind at work but a couple of weeks ago I posted a few ASR errors in reports that a great number of MTs were missing/overlooking that could cost a lot of points in an audit. Since then, I'm noticing a big flood of other ones so I wanted to just post a big warning to BE CAREFUL. I'm not sure if these little landmines are sprinkled through our reports in order to trip us up on audits but I want you all to be especially watchful and diligent so you can do your best work possible.

Some of the things I'm seeing, over and over and over that some are not catching:

1. Gender mix-ups. It happens on almost every report. He/she/him/her are being switched around constantly. This will cost *one full point* on an audit if you accidentally skip over even ONE of them so keep your eyes open, it's almost crazy how many of these I see every day.

2. Age mix-ups. Dictated: "The patient is a 38-year-old male". ASR: "The patient is a 28-year-old male". Again, this will cost BIG on an audit. I never used to see these and now I'm seeing them many times a day. This also should lead to the question of whether or not the dictator is even dictating on the correct patient. It's causing a lot of confusion on our end, too.

3. Extraneous diagnoses/information. This one is new but again, seeing it daily now. ASR is adding information to the report that is NOT DICTATED. Entire diagnoses are being added, tacked on to the bottom of a list, etc that are never even dictated. I know how easy it might be to zone out and not catch and eliminate it, but I have to say I do find it very odd that entire LINES of dictation are being added to the report without being dictated.

Again, don't want to seem paranoid but if MM wanted to eliminate some of us, it wouldn't be that hard to trip us up if we aren't extra watchful of the accuracy of ASR. Each one of these things are weighed heavily point-wise in our audits and just missing a couple can make the difference between us passing or failing. If I only ran into them once or twice, I would assume it was just a fluke but the fact that I am seeing them so many times on a daily basis indicates to me there is something else happening here. I correct them when I see them while I'm filling in blanks but other MMEs may not see them or know to wach for them.

BE CAREFUL, and much love to you all. <3

If they want to fire someone - old and burned out

[ In Reply To ..]
they will find a way to do it regardless of how careful you are. A lot of proofing is subjective and with the sound quality as poor as it is, they can say they heard something different from what you heard. It doesn't take much to go below 99.6%.

If they want to fire you, they just say you are outta here. - They dont need to have a reason. nm

[ In Reply To ..]
x

Extra diagnosis has been going on for a cpl - months also

[ In Reply To ..]
ASRs favorite is GERD. Also beware of phone silence and the ASR adding things that could logically be there as plans for diagnoses as well. Have no clue why this is going on either but it is a real pain in the butt

thank you - anon

[ In Reply To ..]
thank you for a great reminder for us to be careful in these specific areas. I too have noticed the gender confusion in reports. ASR is really bad these days; I had a report the other day that had debridement in it several times. ASR got it wrong all the times even though the doctor said it clearly the same way. UGH!

That's odd ... - anon2

[ In Reply To ..]
I had a report last week that had a "repetitive" word in it. It wasn't a medical word, it was a common English word and it came out on almost every line of the report even though it wasn't even dictated once. I sure hope I removed them all.

I'm starting to think of every report as a "transcription test". Once you think of it as "how many errors can I find/how many corrections can I make" to ASR as if I'm being tested on each report I do, work seems more of a challenge and not quite so miserable.

Thank you so much for taking the time to send us these heads up. - Cool For Cats

[ In Reply To ..]
HDS/MT here...I really appreciate your insider knowledge.

I will be trying to remember to be extra, extra careful on these points!

:)

You're very welcome ... I hope it's useful - MME

[ In Reply To ..]
Listen, none of us have a lot of job security with this company but for all the reasons they can conjure up in their heads to let us go, I never want it to be because of a couple of preventable ASR mistakes on an audit.

Stay alert, everyone! :)

Thanks to you! - I appreciate the heads up (nm)

[ In Reply To ..]
x

So very true thanks for the heads up - just saying

[ In Reply To ..]
The gender mixup is very predominant here lately. Especially when you get the dictators who can barely speak English and mix he/she up anyway. Just one more thing to check for. I thought a next phase of Fluency was checking for gender errors, just like it checks for spelling. Looks like Mmodal hired the Obamacare website geeks to run Fluency too because it works just about as well detecting errors. Just makes them instead.

I have commented on the extraneous information being added, even caught some labs and medications when there was silence to TSM and QC but no one cares. Maybe next week when that survey opens up we should all comment. I know I am planning on taking the survey more than once.

Thanks. As an MT, I have noticed that for some time. - getting worse

[ In Reply To ..]
I think the way MM ASR switches gender, despite being clearly dictated, it almost seems like a conspiracy. ;-D

Lines of undictated text going out to the customer signals to me that that MT is not doing a full listen.ASR has gotten "smarter" and adding congruent text. When I asked an IT about added text, and standard text is output if the speech engine 'hears' part of the usually-said dictation, but they won't fess up to the other added text which it seems to be adding more. One time there was an entire paragraph added to an OP report, and it was congruent with the rest of the report!

I would expect the in-house software behaves the same and buyers are never informed.

3 comments - The Typing Dead

[ In Reply To ..]
I once had a report that was nothing but guitar music, and ASR had filled in several lines of nonsense. You simply cannot afford to "zone out" on these reports.

I had an account that did the gender match detection. It was more trouble than it was worth...if the patient's mom was saying something about a male patient, you had to okay all these gender identifiers. It's about as bad as those automatic headings that pop up when ASR hears diagnosis in the middle of a sentence.

Our job, whether we are paid fairly or not and whether we like it or not, is to LISTEN to these reports and fix them. If they go through incorrect, maybe somebody does deserve to be fired.

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