BURLINGTON, Mass., Jan. 07, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) today announced that the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) uses the Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities of mPower Clinical Analytics as well as PowerScribe Follow-up Manager to support the organization’s Backstop tracking program at six of its hospitals.
The URMC Backstop program helps ensure patients with incidental radiology findings receive their recommended follow-up care in a timely manner. With Nuance’s mPower Clinical Analytics platform to augment the efforts of the hospitals’ radiologists coupled with PowerScribe Follow-up Manager, URMC has moved beyond communication of results and towards a more collaborative care model focused on increasing exam completions, giving patients their best chance for an early cancer diagnosis.
Managing clinical workflows manually is a time-consuming process with often incomplete data. Through the sophisticated data-mining algorithms of mPower Clinical Analytics, Nuance’s cloud-based platform enables easier access to detailed patient insights, allowing radiologists to extract, aggregate, analyze and report on clinical information more efficiently and in compliance with guidelines. Combining these efforts with PowerScribe Follow-up Manager creates an automatic, collaborative, and closed-loop approach to managing patient follow-up recommendations.
The Backstop recommendation tracking system at the University of Rochester Medical Center was designed to be a safety net for patients, tracking potential malignancies and aneurysms when radiology reports include actionable recommendations. Nuance’s mPower Clinical Analytics relies on radiologist-designed and validated algorithms to automatically extract meaningful recommendations from patient reports. Those recommendations are then proactively tracked by PowerScribe Follow-up Manager, alerting program navigators to help prevent missed or delayed follow-up exams and diagnoses. As a result, the University of Rochester Medical Center realized both improved patient outcomes and reimbursements for the organization, including:
- 500 tracked recommendations per month with 91% of recommendations satisfactorialy closed;
- A 29 percent increase in the recommended examination completion rate; and
- Reduced risk of delayed diagnoses by 80 percent
“Gaps in communication and follow-up are too often a barrier to early diagnosis, but we can help prevent patients from falling through the cracks that exist in our complex health care system,” says Dr. Ben Wandtke, President of the Medical Staff and Chief of Diagnostic Imaging for the University of Rochester Medical Center. “The mPower NLP solution automatically reads through our radiology reports to extract radiology recommendations using clinical analytics, adding them to Follow-up Manager so our care teams can complete the necessary follow-up. When we can confidently and consistently ‘close the loop,’ we’re able to make a real difference in our patients’ path to wellness.”
“In any profession, follow-up and follow-through are essential. Each of us has the capacity to create lasting good just by following up, but the people who follow through truly excel. As we can learn from the work at the University of Rochester Medical Center, we can greatly enhance our ability to follow up and make a difference in healthcare every day,” says Karen Holzberger, vice president and general manager of Nuance Healthcare’s Diagnostic Division.
To learn more about the Backstop Program at the University of Rochester Medical Center, click here to read the case study.
About Nuance Healthcare
Nuance provides intelligent systems that support a more natural and insightful approach to clinical documentation, freeing clinicians to spend more time caring for patients. Nuance healthcare solutions capture, improve and communicate more than 300 million patient stories each year, helping more than 500,000 clinicians in 10,000 global healthcare organizations to drive meaningful clinical and financial outcomes. Nuance’s award-winning clinical speech recognition, medical transcription, CDI, coding, quality and medical imaging solutions provide a more complete and accurate view of patient care.
About Nuance Communications, Inc.
Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) is the pioneer and leader in conversational AI innovations that bring intelligence to everyday work and life. The company delivers solutions that understand, analyze and respond to human language to increase productivity and amplify human intelligence. With decades of domain and artificial intelligence expertise, Nuance works with thousands of organizations – in global industries that include healthcare, telecommunications, automotive, financial services, and retail – to create stronger relationships and better experiences for their customers and workforce. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com.
Trademark reference: Nuance and the Nuance logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners.
Contact Information
Richard Mack
Nuance Communications, Inc.
Tel: 781-565-5000
Email: richard.mack@nuance.com