Pros and Cons of Hiring EHR Scribes

With the EHR deadline fast approaching, health care providers are hurrying to digitize their medical records However, ‘meaningful use’ requirements is not just about digitization – it involves basic changes in the way medical information is created, organized, shared and utilized. Electronic health records have transformed clinical workflow and habits. Unlike the dictation and medical transcription set-up, meaningful use of EHR requires the physician to enter clinical/patient notes directly into computer during the consultation. This is proving to be quite a challenge and is depriving physicians of even their leisure time. Some industry experts have recommended that hiring EHR scribes could be the solution. However, this has both pros and cons.

How Medical Scribes Can Help

According to a recent report, studies say that on average, physicians spend eight to 12 minutes per patient filling out the EHR. With long hours spent on EHR data entry, many physicians are losing precious time for patient care and clinical research. This has them turning to medical scribes for documentation support.

A professionally qualified scribe can enter information into the electronic health record (EHR) or chart as required by the physician. Today, there are many institutions that offer training for scribes in specific medical specialty like cardiology, radiology, and so on. Medical scribes can improve the physician’s efficiency and productivity in the following ways

• Entering information into the EHR as directed by the physician/healthcare practitioner
• Assisting healthcare provider in navigating the EHR
• Responding to various messages as directed by the provider
• Locating information such as previous notes, reports, test results, and laboratory results for the purpose of review
• Research of requested information

Hiring the services of EHR scribes benefit physicians in several ways

• Allows detailed and better documentation
• Frees up time to see more patients
• Saves documentation time and effort
• Prevents physician burnout
• Improves the adoption rate of EHR/EMR
• Improves compliance and billing

Likewise, like any new system or practice, medical scribe services also pose challenges

Challenges of Hiring EHR ‘Scribes’

• Physicians may feel uncomfortable to examine a patient or provide a diagnosis in the presence of a third person
• Scribes often change documentation workflows and responsibilities and processes may have to be redefined and restructured
• Scribes in the exam room may cause patients to be less honest. This can affect the accurate diagnosis and treatment, thus impacting the overall quality of care.  
• Accuracy checks performed on the scribed documents may slow down overall workflow
• Scribes without adequate experience and clinical workflow knowledge may cause documentation errors, which in turn, would result in serious issues such as increased costs, decreased turnaround time, billing errors, and so on.

In view of these views, there are still many physicians who rely on a medical transcription company for documentation of narratives and feeds to the electronic health record system.