Speech-language pathology dictation software for evaluations, swallow studies and treatment notes

SLP documentation is long. An evaluation report runs pages, a swallow study needs every finding by consistency, and every daily note has to show why the session needed a speech-language pathologist. General dictation tools were not built for "vallecular residue", "Mendelsohn maneuver" or "semantic feature analysis". The Healthcare dictionary in VoicePrivate has 1,337 speech-language pathology terms, with ENT and neurology terms alongside.

Notes SLPs dictate

Evaluation reports

Background, test results, observations of aphasia, dysarthria, apraxia of speech, stuttering or a phonological disorder, diagnosis, prognosis and goals.

Swallow studies

Modified barium swallow and FEES reports: oral and pharyngeal findings, penetration or aspiration by consistency, vallecular and pyriform sinus residue, strategies tried such as a chin tuck or effortful swallow, and the diet recommendation.

Daily treatment notes

Goals addressed, cueing level, accuracy and how the client responded.

Progress reports and discharge

Progress on each goal, functional change and the reason to continue or stop.

AAC and voice

Augmentative and alternative communication assessments and voice therapy notes.

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association does not set a single format or time frame for documentation, because settings and payers differ. Its guidance says documentation should answer the questions payers ask, such as whether the service is medically necessary and whether it requires the skills of a speech-language pathologist. Those answers are written in sentences, which is where dictation saves you the most time.

Speech-language pathology words general dictation gets wrong

The Healthcare dictionary stores the mishearings it corrects. A few from the speech-language pathology list:

• "dysfonia" to dysphonia and "afonia" to aphonia
• "fonological disorder" to phonological disorder
• "fonemic awareness" to phonemic awareness
• "ackwired apraxia of speech" to acquired apraxia of speech
• "national dysfagia diet" to National Dysphagia Diet
• "dynamic temporal and tactile cuieng" to dynamic temporal and tactile cueing
• "electropalatografy" to electropalatography

What choosing Speech-Language Pathology does

On Mac, open Settings and set the Medical specialty to Speech-Language Pathology. Recognition is then primed with its core terms: aphasia, dysarthria, apraxia of speech, paraphasias, modified barium swallow, videofluoroscopic, FEES, vallecular residue, pyriform sinus, oropharyngeal, chin tuck, effortful swallow, mildly thick liquids, Mendelsohn maneuver, semantic feature analysis, phonological disorder, stuttering, intelligibility, augmentative and alternative communication, fluency, articulation and voice therapy. A long misheard word that is a near miss of one of those terms is matched to it first. On Windows there is no picker and the full medical dictionary is used for every note.

Example: a modified barium swallow study report

Click into each field of the note, press the hotkey, speak, and press the hotkey again. The text is pasted when you stop.

1. Procedure. Press Command+Shift+Space and say: "Modified barium swallow study completed with radiology, lateral view. Trials of 5 milliliters of thin liquid by spoon, thin liquid by cup, mildly thick liquids, puree and solid." Press the hotkey again.
2. Findings: press Command+Shift+Space and say: "Delayed swallow initiation with thin liquid. Penetration to the level of the vocal folds with thin liquid by cup, not ejected, Penetration-Aspiration Scale score of 5. Moderate vallecular residue and mild pyriform sinus residue with solids." Press the hotkey again.
3. Strategies: press Command+Shift+Space and say: "Chin tuck eliminated penetration with thin liquid on 3 of 3 trials. Effortful swallow reduced vallecular residue." Press the hotkey again.
4. Recommendations: press Command+Shift+Space and say: "Regular solids and thin liquids with chin tuck, small single sips by cup, no straws. Swallow therapy 3 times a week for oropharyngeal dysphagia." Press the hotkey again.

What it is not for

VoicePrivate transcribes your own dictation. Do not use it to transcribe a client's speech or language sample. Speech recognition writes the words it thinks the speaker meant, and the Healthcare dictionary corrects misspellings toward real terms, so the errors you need to count would be cleaned out of the transcript.

Into your EMR or IEP system

VoicePrivate pastes through the clipboard and then puts back what you had copied, so there is nothing to install inside the EMR. It works in any text field that accepts a paste: hospital EHRs, rehab EMRs and web based IEP systems in schools. If your EMR runs in Citrix or another remote desktop, the session must allow clipboard redirection from your computer. The EHR dictation guide covers the common setups.

Many SLP notes repeat the same sentences, such as a swallow precautions list or a standard cueing hierarchy. Text shortcuts expand a short phrase into that full paragraph, which you then edit for the client in front of you.

On-device facts

Speech is processed on the Mac or Windows PC that runs VoicePrivate. Audio never leaves that computer, and nothing is sent to a cloud service for transcription. There is no recording of the therapy session: you dictate the note yourself after or between patients. With Auto-save transcriptions on, which is the default, each dictation is also kept in the app's Library on that computer. Turn it off in Settings if you want the record system to hold the only copy.

Price

Healthcare Edition is $297 a year or $34.99 a month per clinician. There is no free trial. Individual monthly and annual plans have a 30-day money-back guarantee on the first payment. Practices and rehab departments of 2 to 20 clinicians can buy team seats.

Speech-language pathology dictation FAQ

Speech-language pathology overlaps with neurology dictation for stroke and aphasia referrals and with physical therapy dictation on rehab teams.