Not only are there huge savings, but the doctors love the ease of use.

“I underestimated how popular this would be,” Halamka says. “I had to progressively add phone capacity because the doctors love it so much. Earlier on, I was saturating the number of incoming telephone lines because they were adopting it so quickly.”

The savings and satisfaction are complemented by a jump in hospital records management efficiency. The turnaround time between when the patient is seen and when the hospital is able to document their visit dropped by 90 percent, from an average of five days down to 12 hours. Radiology reports are now delivered within a half hour.

Beth Israel may have been a big early adopter, but other organizations are quickly learning that speech recognition is the key to successful EMR adoption. According to a report released last year by Datamonitor, the speech recognition market is expected to more than double by 2013, likely due to the benefits Halamka outlined.

His experiences aren’t isolated. A study by health care research firm KLAS found that 76 percent of clinicians who use speech recognition to control an EMR system report faster medical report turnaround time, better service to patients and reduced costs.

As Gartner analyst Wes Rishel puts it, this growing technology niche will go a long way toward closing the adoption gap.

“EMRs cannot make a dent in improving health care without dramatically increased physician adoption. Physicians must not only adopt the products, but begin to use them as more than electronic file drawers and billing systems,” says Rishel, a health care industry analyst for Gartner. “Voice input, well-recognized and well-integrated with EMR software, is critical to closing the gap to meaningful adoption.”