The conversation about medical scribes and particularly virtual medical scribes has been getting louder in recent years. Generally, this means one of two things: either there is too much hype or there really is something happening here. This article examines whether medical scribe services are overhyped or overdue.
- Medical scribes help reduce costs and physician burnout, and increase productivity
- One cardiology program boosted revenues 14x that of scribe costs for a healthy ROI
- Medical scribes can help with many tasks, depending on practice needs
- The benefits of virtual medical scribes over in-person.
Can Medical Scribes Help Physicians and Clinicians?
This is the most fundamental question. The answer seems to overwhelmingly be: yes, medical scribes are an important part of the health care team. The Harvard Health Blog identifies medical scribes as people who can reduce the workload of administrative tasks.
“The practice of medicine requires a large number of administrative tasks, including thorough documentation of all patient visits… Adding a scribe to the team enables physicians to spend more time directly talking with patients, while the scribe documents the visit,” the authors state.
Without medical scribes, this added administrative workload is putting physicians and clinicians under increasing stress, leading to burnout. As one doctor put it, the added work triggered by a move to an electronic medical record (EMR) system was “unsustainable.”
Other physicians have also voiced their support of medical scribes, including virtual scribes. “To me, virtual scribing is one of the holy grails of making medicine tolerable again,” Dr. Jonathan Weiss, an internist in Monticello, New York, told Medical Economics. “During a fifteen-minute established patient visit, I can produce an incredibly well-documented note, get all the tests ordered, and stay on schedule.”
A quick Google search will reveal many similar stories and scientific studies.
What Does a Medical Scribe Program Cost?
Once we’ve established that medical scribes can indeed be helpful, we need to look at the other factors. Invariably, cost will be a central factor. However, costs will vary greatly from practice to practice depending on several factors. What is certain for most practices is that medical scribes will reduce costs somewhere. For all practices, these clerical services will increase physician productivity and well-being.
EMR systems came with the promise that they would eliminate medical transcription costs. Doctors could easily update and maintain their own patient records using the laptop or computer in front of them. Administrators of course thought this sounded great… except that it was never quite true. Yes, physicians could update their own records. But the time involved made it overwhelming. (“Unsustainable” the doctor from above said.) In some cases, physicians were spending more than half their time during a patient visit simply maintaining records.
Cardiology Program Highlights Cost Advantages
Are you really saving money if your highly paid clinicians are spending most of their time doing clerical work instead of seeing patients?
The answer is no – and there is proof. One cardiology program found that their medical scribe program paid for itself 14 times over. It compared 10 physicians working with medical scribes versus 15 who did not. The cohort working with medical scribes generated almost $1.4 million in extra revenue at a cost of almost $99,000. Clearly, in this case, costs associated with medical scribes could be seen as an investment instead of a true “cost” – an investment with a very healthy ROI.
The Human Cost of Doctors Maintaining Their Own Patient Records
There is a human cost as well. Having doctors distracted by screens leads to a chain of events that increasingly affect the patient including reduced patient satisfaction and patient care. EMR distraction can impact patient health, safety, long-term outcomes, and satisfaction.
This system has an impact on doctors as well. Burnout described above along with reduced job satisfaction can further reduce physician effectiveness and sometimes lead to costly errors. And, if he or she decides to leave the clinic or health network for a less stressful environment, the organization will have costs associated with finding a replacement and lost patient billables during the sometimes long search.
Calculating Costs
There isn’t a “one size fits all” approach to medical scribes, so there can’t be a fixed cost either. It depends on many factors including setting, the level of help a clinician needs or wants, how many hours per day the medical scribe will be working, and so on. Where you are in the country will also affect costs as wages and other employee-related expenses vary.
Also note that costs are very different between virtual medical scribes and in-office scribes. In general, virtual medical scribes cost much less for many reasons (please see below).
When calculating costs, don’t forget to add in the time-savings your doctors will enjoy. Asking doctors to spend extra hours maintaining their own records can result in hidden costs such as direct costs of paying a clinician’s salary for doing clerical work and/or costs associated with physician burnout and possible replacement, reduced patient load, mistakes and errors, and other invisible or downstream costs including those mentioned above.
What Do Medical Scribes Do?
Despite all the conversations about medical scribes, many physicians, clinics, health networks, and other health care professionals don’t quite understand what a medical scribe does. Part of the issue is that the actual tasks vary depending on the needs of the clinic and physicians.
Generally speaking, medical scribes help with maintaining the patient record, thus freeing up the physician/clinician to spend more time with patients. However, what their precise updating tasks are can vary depending on different variables including clinician comfort level with technology. Further, the medical scribe could be used for tasks outside of patient record management.
Virtual Medical Scribes vs. In-office Scribes
Another factor that will guide what medical scribes do is whether or not they provide virtual services.
There are many advantages to hiring a virtual medical scribe vs. an in-office scribe. Cost is one of the largest advantages – in general, virtual medical scribes are a much more cost-effective option. This is for several reasons including the fact that you only pay virtual scribes for the amount of time they spend working on your recorded notes, not those empty spaces between patients. Employment-related expenses such as vacation pay and expenses related to adding more staff to your offices are also eliminated.
Another advantage is that virtual scribes are just that: virtual. You might think it is obvious, but many clinicians don’t think about the logistics of having an in-person scribe. It means there will be another person in the room with you and your patient. If exam rooms are tight, they’ll be even tighter with an added staff member. Patients may also be uncomfortable with a non-medical person in the room with you, and in turn may be less likely to discuss personal details.
Virtual scribes, on the other hand, work directly from your recorded notes. They are never in the room with you, and their “presence” is never felt by patients. This leads to better patient encounters, a fuller patient story, and more information for clinicians to make the correct diagnosis and treatment plan.
Virtual scribes are also much more effective if your clinic or office is conducting patient appointments by phone, Zoom, or related technology. Obviously, in these situations, you are less likely to have an in-person scribe anyway. With virtual appointments, again clinicians simply record their notes and forward them to the virtual scribe.
In other words, virtual medical scribes provide clinicians with the clerical support they need without the burden of an added, non-medical staff member in the room with them and their patients. According to one Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) study: “Medical scribes were associated with decreased physician EHR documentation burden, improved work efficiency, and improved visit interactions.”
Find the Right Virtual Medical Scribe Service for Your Practice
The only true way to learn how medical scribes can help and how much you’ll save is to explore options for your own practice. Call iMedat (1-888-779-5888) or email us for a free initial consultation to determine your needs and how our virtual medical scribes can help.