MD-IT streamlines medical transcription via Internet

BOULDER – Thomas Carson knows the electronic medical records train has left the station, and he plans to make sure his company is keeping pace.

MD-IT Inc., which Carson founded in 2000 in Denver and has since moved to Boulder, provides traditional medical transcription services supported by latest technology, he said.

The company offers two Internet-based services, both with the same goal – to improve the accuracy and reduce the time and cost to get doctors’ medical notes typed and into patients’ medical records.
ProMed Connect allows doctors to dictate their notes from any phone or computer with high-speed Internet access.

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ProMed Complete enhances ProMed Connect with speech-recognition software that allows doctors to dictate their notes and then either edit them on the screen or have a transcriber edit them.

Both systems use MD-IT’s ProMed Platform, a secure, Web-based transcription management system that can route notes to transcribers (if needed) and deliver them back to the doctor’s office for placement in patients’ records and archiving.

Today, the standard transcription service model has doctors dictate their notes onto a tape recorder or over the phone to a transcription service provider that delivers the typed notes as many as three or four days later. The doctor then reviews the notes for accuracy and a staff member puts the notes into the patients’ records.

MD-IT is adept at aiming its product at doctors’ comfort level with technology, Carson said. “We are trying to get doctors to move from an old-fashioned method to high-tech. If you can give them an incremental process it will be easier.

“If the doctor is in love with their phone, we give them a new phone number. If they are used to using a tape recorder, we introduce them to a digital recorder. But we can offer more high-tech solutions if they choose. We give them a user interface at whatever level of technology they are used to.”

None of this will put transcribers out of business, Carson said. “We see an opportunity for the traditional transcriptionist to be a key part of the process.”

One thing they can do is pull discrete data – like diagnostic codes – out of medical notes for billing and insurance. That can’t be automated, Carson said.

“It’s a narrative process; doctors tell a story about what happened to somebody, and it’s not possible to use a pull-down menu. It’s not consistent with the way doctors are used to documenting medical problems.”

Carson launched the company with Chairman Peter Tippett, a medical doctor who has since gone on to found Herndon, Va.-based CyberTrust, a worldwide provider of Internet security services.

MD-IT began as a client-server software company that helped doctors create their own transcription systems using speech recognition. “We had moderate success, but it became clear that if you really wanted to make a difference and scale the business we were going to have to find another way to go to market.”

That’s when Carson hit on the idea of involving transcription providers as part of his business model.
The company’s growth strategy is to acquire medical transcription companies whose owners share MD-IT’s vision of taking the trusted services relationship between doctors and transcribers into a trusted technology relationship, Carson said.

“We aren’t kicking them out,” he said. “One of our primary selection criteria is that the owner have the sales and account management skills and want to be part of a company that can grow.”

MD-IT’s most recent purchase was Texas-based Trans Med Plus Inc. in July. It bought Boulder-based ProMed Transcription Services in September 2005, which led to the company relocating to Boulder this year. It should close on four more acquisitions by the end of January, Carson said. He would not say how much MD-IT paid for the businesses, citing competitive reasons.

MD-IT has identified about 5,000 companies it could buy, and has narrowed that number to “several hundred” that meet its criteria.

With its current revenue of more than $2 million per year, MD-IT will turn profitable next year, Carson predicts.

He also expects it to be a $100 million company within five years with 30 or 40 companies under its belt.
Total investment to date, between Carson, Tippett and a number of angels including Lu Cordova, former president of CTEK, is $4 million.

MD-IT is in the middle of a Series A private placement of up to $3 million that is expected to close by the end of November.

A number of local medical offices use MD-IT, including some of Boulder Community Hospital’s Community Medical Services Organization clinics and the Fort Morgan Medical Group in Fort Morgan.

“It’s awesome,´ said Rebecca Hepworth, practice administrator at the Fort Morgan clinic.

The clinic, which has four doctors and a physician’s assistant, would have to convert to electronic medical records eventually, and Hepworth thought automating dictation would help with legibility and timeliness.

“When we were sending our dictation out to be transcribed it would take three or four days to get back,” she said. “We had to download it into our system and cut and paste into charts and then send to the doctor to be approved as it was typed. Sometimes the doctors wouldn’t have time to dictate, and then they would write longhand notes.”

The process not only had a time delay and resulted in some inaccuracies transcribing from the handwritten
notes, it was expensive. Hepworth said transcription services ranged from $20,000 to $45,000 per year.

Even with startup costs, training time and a two-month learning curve, Hepworth estimates the first year of using MD-IT will cost about $11,000.

“Now everybody’s notes are readable and timely,” Hepworth said. “We’ve had to refine our systems a little bit, but it’s made our whole system more efficient.”

Contact Caron Schwartz Ellis at 303-440-4950 or csellis@bcbr.com.

MD-IT Inc.
4735 Walnut St., Suite 140
Boulder, CO 80301
(720) 932-6262
md-it.com
Thomas Carson, president and chief executive
Primary service: Medical transcription
Employees: 85 nationwide
Founded: 2000