9/21/2023 0 Comments Wiki virtual medical scribeVirtual scribes are a particularly good fit for practices in remote areas that have a difficult time enticing qualified physical scribes to come work at their clinics or hospitals. However, using a virtual scribe, who is not present in the examination room, can help put the patient more at ease when they are alone with the doctor. Patients might be worried about being judged by that additional person, or it makes them feel claustrophobic. Research has also shown that patients may feel uncomfortable with a doctor and an in-person medical scribe are both in a small examination room. Small clinics and large healthcare systems alike can make a lot more revenue thanks to medical scribes. Each new patient means more labs, tests, or even other surgeries. Using a virtual medical scribe gives the doctor many more options and additional revenue. The doctor can also use that time to spend on other activities, like publishing, research, management, and professional development opportunities or they can choose to spend more time with each patient or see more patients. This reduces flexible scheduling opportunities but gives an increased opportunity for remote work. By outsourcing this work to a virtual scribe, a doctor can easily see one more person an hour, and saves two hours of typing and entering data each day. Because each patient encounter can take 4 minutes to enter into the EMR, with the average charting time taking up to 12 minutes, however, some of the more complex cases can take up to 20 minutes per patient. That is why many places are using virtual medical scribes to utilize the doctor’s time better, allowing them to see more patients with shorter wait times. Either way, patient satisfaction isn’t increased, and doctors are spending too much time entering data. This means either fewer patients can be scheduled (meaning less revenue), or to get the same amount of revenue, each patient must be billed more. However, if a doctor waits until after the patient leaves the examination room to type up their notes, it means the next patient has to wait even longer to be seen. If the doctor is filling out the EMR, it might be in front of the patient, who might perceive the doctor as not paying attention to them as they are talking to them and describing their symptoms. It does not make economic sense to pay a doctor $240 an hour to fill out data into an EMR. However, no matter how good the EMR is, it still takes precious time to enter data into the system.Īccording to an article in the Harvard Business Review titled “ The Strategy That Will Fix Healthcare” a doctor’s cost per minute might be up to $4 a minute, or $240 for a full hour. In today’s day and age, most doctors and hospitals will use an EMR (electronic medical records) that is specialized in their practice. Why would a doctor need a medical scribe?
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