hours saved each week on chart work
additional minutes spent with patients and clients during every appointment
minutes to sign up, download and start using Talkatoo
Andrea graduated from Colorado State University College of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences with honors in 2005. She now is a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) at the Animal Care Center of Green Valley in Green Valley, AZ!
Andrea Hilden, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) at the Animal Care Center of Green Valley, believes veterinarians can help owners become top advocates for their pets. For Dr. Hilden, appointments with her furry patients and their owners are valuable opportunities to educate her clients so they can make the best choices for their pets.
“If I’m working on record keeping for 5 less hours a week, that more than pays for itself, because I can spend more time with patients and clients—and it’s that time that actually matters.”
The Animal Care Center of Green Valley serves all of southern Arizona and is committed to providing excellent veterinary care with leading technology. The clinic strives to honour the human-animal bond and develop long-term partnerships with clients so that vets and pet owners become a team working together to enhance the quality of life for their animal companions.
Andrea Hilden, DVM, is a veterinarian at the Animal Care Center of Green Valley. She is passionate about getting to know pets as individuals and considers it a privilege to help their owners better understand their needs. Dr. Hilden believes veterinarians can support pet owners to become their furry loved ones’ #1 advocates. This is why she treats appointments as valuable opportunities to educate her clients so that they can make the best choices for their pets’ care.
Dr. Hilden’s chart work was mounting, regularly requiring her to come into work early and stay late. She’d often have to arrive at the clinic at least a half-hour before her appointments just to catch up on charts from the previous day.
“I was spending way too much time in the after-hours getting my records done,” Dr. Hilden said.
Bogged down by typing and trying to complete charts before each new appointment, Dr. Hilden knew she needed a solution to help save time so that she could focus on what mattered most—her patients and clients.
“I’m a better doctor when I spend time rejuvenating myself, away from the office—and Talkatoo helps me do that.”
After hearing about Talkatoo’s dictation software at the Fetch San Diego trade show, Dr. Hilden scheduled an onboarding session to learn how to download the software, set up the microphone, and use different features.
The implementation process went smoothly and Dr. Hilden now uses Talkatoo in her veterinary workflow on a daily basis. She prefers to dictate when there are no other doctors in her shared office, usually in the morning.
“Instead of coming into the clinic an hour early and only getting through 4 charts, I can come in an hour early and get through 12 charts because I’m dictating them,” she said.
Dr. Hilden predominantly uses Talkatoo to dictate client communication. The software helps veterinarians with emails to clients and can work with other communication tools, as well as all practice management software. In addition, Talkatoo enables veterinarians to streamline medical record keeping by dictating chart notes.
The software is user-friendly, so Dr. Hilden can simply click ‘start dictation’ to begin and ‘stop dictation’ when she’s finished. One of Dr. Hilden’s favourite aspects of Talkatoo is the ‘My Words’ feature, which not many dictation software solutions offer. This allows her to enter words that she uses commonly into the system.
For example, there is a wild animal called a javelina in southern Arizona, and Dr. Hilden has had a fair share of dogs come to the clinic to be treated for javelina attacks. With Talkatoo, she can enter the word ‘javelina’ in the system so that the software recognizes the word the next time she uses it. She also does this for various medications that she prescribes.
Dr. Hilden has been able to reduce the time she spends writing out electronic medical records from 10+ hours a week to 5 hours with Talkatoo. The solution enables her to spend more time on priorities like patient care and client education.
“I tend to spend my entire appointment time with the client and the patient. I don’t get a lot of charting done during appointments, but that’s just my personal preference of how I manage my appointments,” she said. “If I’m working on record keeping for even 5 less hours a week, the software more than pays for itself, because I’m able to better provide the care that my patients need.”
With Talkatoo, Dr. Hilden no longer has to worry about cutting appointment times 10 minutes short so that she can fill out patient records before her next appointment. Instead, she uses those precious minutes to educate her clients on best practices in pet care.
“I can focus on education, and it’s the time with the clients that actually matters,” she said.
Being able to explain the veterinary care process in more detail to clients means that they’ll be more likely to understand and comply with the course of care that Dr. Hilden prescribes to help their pet. Ultimately, this supports the clinic’s bottom line.
Dr. Hilden believes her investment in Talkatoo was extremely valuable because it allows her to go home earlier each day and spend more time on things she enjoys outside of the clinic. This in turn makes her a better doctor.
“It’s easy for vets to become consumed by their work, but I’m at my best when I spend time rejuvenating myself, away from the office—and Talkatoo helps me do that,” she said.
Since implementing Talkatoo, Dr. Hilden has gotten other veterinarians interested in the software who had previously shied away from costly traditional speech-to-text programming.
Talkatoo gives veterinarians greater flexibility than legacy solutions, because as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product, clinics don’t have to purchase or upgrade expensive boxed software. Talkatoo also works with the tools that clinics already have—all they have to do is sign up and install the software, which is easy to use and doesn’t require extensive training.
Hilden’s advice to other veterinary clinics is to buy a few units of Talkatoo and get a couple of people at the clinic comfortable with the software.
“Choose people who will be invested in the process and let it spread like a little bit of a wildfire, which is what I’m doing at my practice. It’s starting to get people more interested in the idea, seeing how much time I can save,” she said.
Talkatoo’s dictation software helps veterinarians and other professionals save hours on tedious record-keeping to spend more time with patients and less time at their desks. Our customers are busy professionals who have high hourly bill rates and hectic schedules—their time is valuable. Driven by liability management and professional regulation, their documentation requirements are rigorous. We save our customers time, so they can get more done.
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