Demand For Medical Scribes Increases
By Katie Wike, contributing writer
As more providers switch to EHRs, hiring scribes to cut doctors computer time increases as well. But is it a good thing?
Hiring scribes to input vast quantities of data into EHRs is one solution to the stress electronic records cause physicians. As the number of providers adopting EHRs increases, so does the use of scribes, but while this may come as a relief to some, others say allowing scribes who lack medical licenses to enter information into the record could be hurting advancements in EHR technology and preventing further EHR innovation.
iHealth Beat reports medical scribes (often medical students) make between $8 and $16 to record physician notes during exams and enter medical terminology and billing data. It’s important to note, however, that the doctor must review the information, since ultimately, they are responsible for what is entered into the EHR.
According to Marketplace, this allows doctors to spend their time seeing more patients, rather than taking up time entering data. Cheyenne Regional ER Doctor Amy Tortorich says it take her about 10 minutes per patient. She usually sees about 30 patients a day. She explains, “That’s an extra five hours charting. So half my shift, almost half my shift.”
When Tortorich uses a scribe, she can see twice as many patients, and that makes her patients happy. “All of my doctor friends want this,” she says about the scribes, which she notes are well worth the cost. Demand like this has increased the number of scribes working, and experts predict that the 20,000 scribes working today will grow to 100,000 by 2020.
But not everyone is sold on the idea. Some healthcare experts think allowing scribes to enter data for doctors is holding back the development of EHRs. George Gellert, medical informatics officer at Christus Health Systems, says that the less hands-on time physicians spend with their EHRs the less innovation will come from it.
He compares medical records to the cellphones of the 90s; clunky and cumbersome. But, through consumer input, companies found out what worked and what didn't and today we have the smartphone. “But if someone was there to manage all [your] cellphone functioning, would there have been the pressure to evolve cell phones? I suspect not.”
Health IT Outcomes cited a report from earlier this year where Gellert and his colleagues wrote, “Despite scribes’ reported value, this industry should be viewed as what it is: a workaround or adaptation to the suboptimal state of today’s EHRs.”