A busy Atlanta Spine Surgeon who previously dictated with ELTS but left the practice happened upon ELTS at a BONES conference in Asheville, NC.  Intrigued by the new EMR focus of the company, he asked to test the templated charting application, PowerTouch.  ELTS Team Leader, Elisa Comer, took the initiative to design his template system.  "He'd dictated with us before, so I was able to build his workflow around the way he'd always seen his patients." 

Taking a worktype approach, the initial process targeted normal postop visits.  In short order, these notes were re-directed from dictation/transcription to the PowerTouch system, eliminating the need to dictate these encounters. Quickly, the next worktype was addressed and another switch was made, eliminating even more dictation time.  There was no huge up-front cost, and using the system was less than one-third the cost of regular transcription.  "Quality was not an issue because we were in charge of that, just like we'd always been," states Comer.

"Perhaps the biggest benefit, though, was the ability of the physician to go home on time every night," she stated.  "Sure, we saved him a ton of money, but you really can't put a number on the doctor's time.  When he told me that for the first time he'd actually made it to his son's soccer game, I knew we had a win-win. It was very satisfying, and I felt we'd done our job. And he did, too."