Virtual scribe services have grown in recent years. That’s for many reasons, though not least of all because many physicians and clinicians are realizing how much time they can save. Electronic medical records (EMRs) actually add additional hours to the clinician’s day catching up on (perhaps ironically) “paperwork.” In turn, this leads to physician burnout and decreased satisfaction. It can also lead to incomplete or mislabeled patient data – and that can have a cascading effect on patient care at both the patient and the clinic levels.
Virtual medical scribe services solve all these problems. Virtual scribes can provide:
- Much-needed help documenting patient encounters to avoid physician burnout
- More accurate and complete patient records
- An opportunity for better face-to-face interactions with patients
- Improved satisfaction and a better work/life balance for clinicians
Virtual Scribe Services Have Grown in Recent Years. Here’s How They Can Help You.
The above list covers four of the reasons why virtual scribe services have grown over the years. Like any complex system, there is an interaction of many different factors at work. But they boil down to:
- Clinicians were already overworked
- EMR and EHR systems have added demands on clinician time and skills
- Virtual scribe services provide clerical support to free up clinician time for the sake of patient care and increased billings – and their own sanity
Here are how virtual scribes can help you and your office and practice.
1. Virtual Scribe Services Provide Much-needed Help Documenting Patient Encounters to Avoid Physician Burnout
Physician burnout is becoming more and more prevalent. Again, a number of factors are at play – especially during the age of COVID. But even before that, clinician burnout was on the rise due to that added work that comes with moving to an EMR system. In fact, one (pre-COVID) 2019 Stanford Medicine study showed that physicians gave current EMR technology an F for this and other reasons.
Physicians, clinics, and health networks started looking for ways to reduce clinician workloads. Virtual scribe services have grown in recent years because they provide much-needed – and professional – clerical help.
The journal Medical Economics tells the story of Dr. Jennifer Bacani McKenney, a family practice physician in Kansas. As her practice grew, she was overwhelmed by the amount of clerical work, calling it “unsustainable.” So, Dr. McKenney hired a virtual scribe to help record patient encounters. Today, she is less likely to feel overwhelmed, and she is able to leave the office at 5pm along with everyone else.
2. Virtual Scribe Services Provide More Complete, More Accurate Patient Records
Another reason why virtual scribe services have grown in recent years is that they actually help improve patient record accuracy. For one thing, these clerical services reduce the multi-tasking workload on physicians – and the mistakes that often come with multi-tasking.
For another, virtual scribes are also more likely to be trained in data processing, which is a key skill when it comes to EMR management. Asking high-paid clinicians to stop mid-patient to become data processors is greatly reducing productivity. So the reductions in productivity that come with multi-tasking are compounded by clinicians’ relatively fewer data processing skills.
Although this sounds intuitive, there is also strong evidence to back up these observations. One study in the Annuls of Family Medicine concluded that virtual scribe services provided improvements in many areas including patient record accuracy. “We found that scribes produced significant improvements in overall physician satisfaction, satisfaction with chart quality and accuracy, and charting efficiency without detracting from patient satisfaction.” (Emphasis ours.)
3. Virtual Scribe Services Provide an Opportunity for Better Face-To-Face Interactions with Patients
“I am a huge fan of the virtual scribe,” one physician reported during a Yale Medicine study into the impact of virtual scribe services. “It has enhanced patient satisfaction and especially efficiency.”
Dr. McKenney from above reported similar results. She said that hiring virtual scribe services completely changed the way she interacts with her patients. “We get such good one-on-one time with our patients looking them in the eyes, chatting, and doing what we do as doctors.”
Again, it goes back to the problems resulting from multi-tasking. Add to that the amount of time that’s needed to search, hunt, and peck through an EMR, and once again the problems compound. The patients definitely notice when a physician spends more time staring at the computer than talking with them.
Virtual scribe services reduce or eliminate this multi-tasking pitfall, allowing physicians to focus on the patients once again.
4. Improved Job Satisfaction and a Better Work/Life Balance for Clinicians
In another Medical Economics article, doctors described having a much better work/life balance once their clinics hired virtual scribe services.
“To me, virtual scribing is one of the holy grails of making medicine tolerable again,” said Dr. Jonathan Weiss, an internist in Monticello, New York. “During a fifteen-minute established patient visit, I can produce an incredibly well-documented note, get all the tests ordered and stay on schedule. In the majority of cases, I can legitimately obtain a higher E/M (evaluation and management) level because my notes are so robust. Ten minutes after my last patient, I’m in the car and headed home.”
Clinics also benefit when their clinicians are happy. In the same article, Dr. Matthew Malek of Rhode Island estimated that the cost to replace a doctor who leaves the clinic is between $300,000 to $500,000 when you factor in loss of billings during the time it takes to hire another doctor, as well as recruitment and onboarding costs.
But when he brought the data to upper management that showed how frustrated and overworked the physicians were getting, virtual scribe services suddenly seemed like an obvious and necessary solution.
“The maturation of the scribe market makes it a much more understandable value proposition,” Dr. Malek said. “I think remote scribing is a very scalable intervention to improve physician well-being.”
How Can Virtual Scribe Services Work for You?
Another good reason why virtual scribe services have grown recently is the fact that they are so flexible. Virtual scribes can work to your clinic’s preferences, or even each clinician’s. That improves efficiency and effectiveness even more since doctors and clinicians can work with their virtual scribes in a way that makes the most sense to them. iMedat specializes in recorded scribing – clinicians record their notes and upload them to our system, then our virtual scribes turn them into robust notes, tagged and ready to import into your EMR system.
Contact iMedat to find out how our virtual scribe services can save you and your doctors time, money, and sanity. We’re available for a free consultation to explain more about how they work, to learn about your workflows, and ultimately devise a system that works best for you.