Healthcare News and Trends
Medical Scribes: A Physician’s Secret Weapon
March 06, 2018
By: Derek Klein
Traditionally, a physician's job has been focused solely on
direct patient care. However, the advent of electronic health records
(EHRs) has created an overload of documentation and clerical responsibilities
that slows physicians down and pulls them away from actual patient care.
According to the 2016 Survey of America’s Physicians: Practice Patterns and
Perspectives, conducted by Merritt Hawkins on behalf of The Physicians
Foundation, physicians spend 21% of their time engaged in non-clinical
paperwork.
To relieve this paperwork overload, physicians across the
country are turning to medical scribes. Medical scribes assist physicians in a
variety of documentation tasks including coding, recording laboratory and
radiology results, meaningful use compliance, and EHR data entry.
The
popularity of scribes in the United States has risen sharply recently as they
are currently being used in more than 1,000 hospitals and clinics in the United
States. It is estimated that by 2020, there will be 100,000 medical scribes in
the United States, or 1 scribe for every 9 physicians (American College of Medical
Scribe Specialists, April 2015).
The growing use of medical scribes can be attributed to
their ability to improve physician satisfaction levels, charting efficiency,
patient wait times, and productivity levels. According to a recent study
published by the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine,
family physicians who work with medical scribes reported increased benefits
related to quality of care, clinical operations, and patient experience.
The 2016 Survey of America’s Physicians also illustrates
the issues leading to frustration and dissatisfaction for today’s physicians.
The factor cited most frequently by physicians as being least satisfying was
regulatory/paperwork burdens. On the other hand, physicians identified patient
relationships as their primary source of professional satisfaction. Medical
scribes allow physicians to have more direct face time with their patients and
spend time doing what they were trained to do and what they want to do.
Not only do medical scribes provide increased satisfaction
and efficiency for physicians, they also provide additional revenue for their
facility. According to a 2015 study by the National Center for Biotechnology
Information, physicians with scribes generated an additional revenue of $24,257.
Total additional revenue generated was $1.4 million at a cost of roughly
$99,000 for the employed scribes.
As physicians and healthcare facilities look for ways to
reduce the paperwork load associated with EHR data entry, quality measure
documentation, and meaningful use compliance, medical scribes will continue to
increase in popularity.
To learn more about Merritt Hawkins or to search our jobs database, click here.
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