Karen Clay Reports in “For the Record” that the Medical Transcription Industry is Ticking Upwards
Clinician burnout is on the rise, at least partly due to the fact that doctors are being forced to update their own EMRs. As Karen Clay reported in “For the Record” (April 2019), doctors are starting to push back, returning to medical transcription to relieve the workload.
“The medical transcription industry is starting to see an uptick in dictation volumes as healthcare providers begin to realize the woes of generating documentation themselves,” Clay writes. “Reports have emerged in which physicians express a diminished enthusiasm for their profession, noting that administrative tasks were less about patient relationships and more about coding, billing, reimbursement, and compliance.”
EMRs came with the promise of reduced transcription costs. Administrators loved that idea, but the unintended consequence was that doctors were forced to do their own EMR updating. There are countless reports of the side effects: patient encounters where more time is spent facing the computer, long after-hours sessions updating EMRs at home, fewer actual patients seen, and so much more. And, of course, clinician burnout. These chronic conditions have lasted for years in doctors’ offices across the United States.
There are many reasons all of this came to pass, including overpromising on the part of the EMR vendors, changing documentation needs of administrators, and underestimating the impact of getting physicians to do it all. Clinician burnout is real, and it’s getting worse.
Hybrid Medical Transcription Solutions Are Effective
As Clay states, “It’s been estimated that one-half of a physician’s workday is spent entering data into EHRs.” She also references a 2017 Medscape Annual Survey that found more than half of physicians had “frequent or constant feelings of burnout”.
That’s not to say EMR systems should be abandoned. EMRs bring plenty of advantages. But we can find better ways of helping clinicians interact with them so that they are maximizing their patient time (and associated billables) while decreasing their computer time, a key contributor to clinician burnout.
iMedat offers a hybrid medical transcription solution that does just that. We believe a documentation system should be tailored to the user, not vice versa. That’s why iMedat starts with a needs assessment to find out which EMR system the clinician uses, his or her comfort level using it, and where they could use the most help. Then iMedat customizes a documentation solution to that specific clinician. That way, we can provide clerical support where it’s needed, and stay out of their way where it’s not.
Clerical Support Reduces Clinician Burnout. Period.
Clerical support is designed to free up clinicians, taking care of data management so that physicians can concentrate on patients. Taking away that clerical support doesn’t save money in the long run – in fact, it costs money since that $150,000 per year doctor becomes one of the world’s most expensive file clerks! Worse, billables will go down as they spend time doing their own clerical work. Just how much have you saved then?
With iMedat, you can get the clerical support you need to help your office run more efficiently. The result will be reduced clinician burnout, higher billables (for a stronger bottom line), and better patient care.
Contact iMedat today for your free needs assessment. Let’s get your office back to working as efficiently as it can.
Read Karen Clay’s piece here: