A faster, more accurate way for ASC physicians to complete operative notes so billing teams can get to work without the wait.
Incomplete or delayed operative notes are one of the more persistent bottlenecks in ASC revenue cycle management. Physicians are required to complete an immediate op note within 24 hours of a procedure, with additional time allowed for the full operative note — but in practice, finalized documentation often takes much longer to reach the ASC.
Your ASC billing team needs that documentation to code and bill cases, and when it's held up in a physician's dictation queue or sitting in a transcription service somewhere between the surgeon's office and yours, both compliance and cash flow pay the price.
SIS Scribe, developed by Surgical Information Systems (SIS), is an AI-powered dictation solution specifically for ASCs that allows physicians to dictate, review, and sign operative notes immediately after a case — all from their phone, wherever they happen to be. Completed notes are available to the billing team in minutes, not days.
"When I'm doing an ASC site visit, and I go back to look at a case from a week or two ago, sometimes I can't even find the op note," says Michael Scheidegger, Product Manager at SIS. "It just hasn't made it back to the ASC yet. And at that point, everything downstream is on hold."
Part of what makes this problem difficult to solve through traditional workflows is the pace physicians work at. As soon as a surgeon finishes a case, they're often on to the next one or heading out the door.
"We hear consistently from physicians that being able to complete a full op note right from their phone, right after a case, is a meaningful change," Scheidegger says. "They're not waiting until they get back to their office. They're not stuck at a computer. They get it done and move on." The result is less administrative time weighing on physicians at the end of a long day, and faster access to the documentation your ASC billing team needs.
Traditional dictation technology works by measuring the pitch and frequency of sounds and matching them to syllables. Even solutions trained on medical vocabulary operate without context, which means when two terms sound similar, the system frequently picks the wrong one.
SIS Scribe takes a different approach. The solution leverages AI trained on a wide variety of speech data that understands complex medical terminology and contextual meaning — not just what a word sounds like, but what it's likely to mean given the procedure, the physician, and the patient. The result is documentation that requires little to no correction.
"The accuracy has to be built in from the start," Scheidegger says. "You can't assume a physician is going to sit down and carefully review the transcription before signing it. They're moving on to what's next. So the system has to get it right."
SIS Scribe combines intelligent AI technology with a straightforward workflow to deliver faster, more accurate operative note completion for today's ambulatory surgery centers.
SIS Scribe understands medical terminology, context, and nuance, producing accurate transcriptions without requiring physicians to repeat themselves or spend time correcting errors.
Physicians dictate and receive a completed operative note in minutes. Notes can be reviewed and signed — whether that's between cases or at the end of the day.
Surgery centers can format operative note templates to their specifications, or physicians can dictate free-form and structure the note afterward — whichever approach fits how they prefer to work.
SIS Scribe integrates with any SIS cloud solution and is also compatible with other ASC management systems, so centers do not need to be a SIS client to benefit.
SIS Scribe is fully HIPAA-compliant and thoughtfully designed with security at its core, so you can have confidence that patient health information is always protected. Recordings are not used to train third-party AI models. At the same time, SIS Scribe is built to continually improve its performance through ongoing use, ensuring a better experience over time.
Getting op notes completed on the day of service shortens days to bill and gives your coders what they need to move cases through the revenue cycle without interruption. For procedures involving hardware, implants, or devices, the stakes are higher — every billable component needs to be documented, and a note completed days after the fact carries more risk of omission or error.
"For the more complex cases, that's really where physicians want to dictate thoroughly," Scheidegger says. "Getting them to sit down and do that before they leave the surgery center can be a challenge. With SIS Scribe, they can get it done right away — and for those cases where the details really matter, you see the most impact on your revenue cycle."
SIS Scribe is available to both SIS clients and centers not currently using a SIS solution.
Current SIS clients can contact their sales representative to learn more about adding SIS Scribe. If you are not yet working with SIS, we would love to show you what SIS Scribe can do and how it fits within the broader suite of solutions SIS has built for ASCs. Request a demo of SIS Scribe.
When physicians can complete their documentation the moment a case is done, everyone wins — your physicians, your billing team, and your bottom line.