Lemon Tree Family Medicine is a small private practice in Anchorage, Alaska that focuses on providing quality patient care to its local community. Founding partner Dr. Sharon Lemmons starts off a typical appointment by playing catch up - asking her patient about their latest fishing trip or how they’ve spent the warm summer months since their last visit. “The reason I started my own practice is because the patient-physician relationship is so important to me. I didn’t want to go into a health system where I would have to talk to my computer instead of my patient,” says Lemmons.
“The reason I started my own practice is because the patient-physician relationship is so important to me. I didn’t want to go into a health system where I would have to talk to my computer instead of my patient.”
Because she gives undivided attention to the patient in front of her, Dr. Lemmons spends very little time note-taking during an appointment. Instead, she brings this work home with her – spending several hours each night charting notes. “When I noticed that I was missing out on milestones in my personal life, like helping my kids with homework or attending my son’s cross-country ski race, I knew I needed to come up with a more efficient documentation process.”
“When I noticed that I was missing out on milestones in my personal life, like helping my kids with homework or attending my son’s cross-country ski race, I knew I needed to come up with a more efficient documentation process.”
Dr. Lemmons considered a number of solutions, including human scribes and virtual transcription services. Yet she felt it too invasive to bring another person into her small exam room and found that transcription tools still required her to spend a lot of time reviewing and editing notes. Then her EHR provider, DrChrono, suggested DeepScribe. “I was immediately impressed by DeepScribe’s accuracy. I felt I could confidently leave the note-taking to DeepScribe and focus on the patient."
By bringing DeepScribe into her practice, Dr. Lemmons has cut down on documentation time by 80%. Soon after a patient visit, her notes are ready for review including a complete subjective summary, the ICD-10 coded diagnosis, and the prescribed plan. It now takes Dr. Lemmons as little as 5 minutes per visit to review and sign off on her notes – a huge improvement on the 30 minutes per visit and consequently, the many long evening hours she previously spent on documentation.
With DeepScribe working alongside her, Dr. Lemmons no longer worries about what she will have to sacrifice in her personal life to give her patients the level of care they deserve. She can balance a full work day of seeing patients and managing a business, and still get home in time for family dinner.
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