Update Regarding Medical Transition Services at Premier Health

By Roberto Colón, MD, system chief medical officer, Premier Health and Walter Reiling, MD, system chief medical information officer, Premier Health

Since the Epic EMR was implemented at Premier Health in 2006, there has been a continual decline in the demand for conventional medical transcription services, with a shift to the use of Dragon speech recognition and enhanced EMR functionalities. Our experience has also mirrored what has been occurring at the national level. Currently, only a small percentage of the provider community is utilizing this service throughout the Premier Health system.

While we have continued to offer this as a choice in the past, our agreement with the current supplier will end in the near future. As a result, medical transcription services at Premier Health locations will cease effective April 15th, 2025.

We recognize some may need assistance learning to leverage Epic documentation tools and Dragon speech recognition. If you need that assistance, please contact Jane Bidwell atjabidwell@PremierHealth.com or Cheri Contario at ccontario@premierhealth.com. Jane and Cheri can help with any questions about how to document directly into Epic using the integrated tools.

In addition, the site chief medical officers will be available to answer questions related to this transition. Contact information is included below:  

Miami Valley Hospital  
Dr. Andre Harris: atharris@premierhealth.com 

Miami Valley Hospital North and Upper Valley Medical Center
Dr. Lakmali Ranathunga: lcranathun@premierhealth.com 

Miami Valley Hospital South and Atrium Medical Center
Dr. Scott Kanagy: sbkanagy@premierhealth.com 

We are confident the resources are in place to make this transition as smooth as possible. For those still using the transcription services, please contact ASAP to get help with becoming accustomed to the newer tools. Thank you.

Back to the March 2025 issue of Premier Pulse