TODAY'S BUSINESS CHALLENGE:

Brent is a clinical psychologist who specializes in patients dealing with the stresses of living with HIV disease. While his practice is focused on individual therapy sessions, he also does couples counseling and runs a group therapy session on Monday nights for eight men with HIV. Needless to say, each session is quite intense and much of the subject matter covered in therapy is emotionally draining.

For years, Brent has kept rather cryptic notes on his patients. Like many therapists, he wants to protect their confidentiality in case anyone ever breaks into his office and tries to access his files. However, as his practice has grown, and he has started to deal more and more with issues of a patient's impending death, he finds it is taking him longer to summarize each session in writing. He is also finding that, as he gets older, he is having more difficulty reading his own handwriting (which is nearly microscopic in size).

Last weekend. Brent went skiing with some friends. Due to a freak accident, he broke his right arm. Brent is now in too much pain to write with his right hand. Between dealing with his own physical pain and the emotional pain of his clients, he does not know how he will be able to document each counseling session.

TOMORROW'S BUSINESS SOLUTION:

A close friend of Brent's referred him to Alert & Oriented Medical Transcription Services, which provided an easy solution. Brent has programmed one of the autodial keys on his office phone with the number for Alert & Oriented's digital dictation system. After each session, he spends three to four minutes on the phone dictating a summary of the time he spent with his patient. He refers to the patient and any other people mentioned during the session only by their first names.

Four months after his accident, Brent's arm is fully healed yet he is still dictating reports. Why? He has found that the process of dictating gives him a much-needed emotional catharsis after each session. The savings in time spent making chicken scratches on a chart and then trying to decipher them a week later has allowed him to take on an additional client, whose fee covers the cost of a week's dictated reports. Brent is now considering adding a second group session on Thursday nights.