Physicians are being burdened by the dual demands of caring for their patients and completing admin tasks. As found by the Medical Scribes Training Institute, the stress of balancing these responsibilities often causes burnout and inefficiency in practice management.
Just imagine being constantly torn between listening to a patient while documenting all the important details. Not only will the quality of patient care diminish but the documentation’s accuracy as well.
Are you tired of long hours and stressful weeks in your clinical practice? You could benefit greatly from hiring a remote scribe.
In this blog post, we’ll discuss how remote scribing benefits to increasing job satisfaction in the medical field, and why they’re the best investment to have in your career as a physician.
Driving Success for Practices Across the US
What is remote scribing?
Virtual medical scribes help physicians document their encounters with their patients in an EHR system from remote locations. Also known as telescribes, they can work from anywhere they like, as long as they use a HIPAA-compliant secure internet connection.
What does a remote scribe do?
Think of a remote scribe as your virtual assistant (VA) who’s knowledgeable in EHR documentation, medical terminology, and has training in the medical field. Even though they’re not present physically, they can accomplish their documentation responsibilities by listening in on your patient visits via secure video and audio connections. In the meantime, because you’re free from needing to record your patient’s accounts, you can focus better on listening to their concerns.
How is a virtual assistant different from a remote medical scribe?
A virtual assistant and a remote scribe may both have similar skills, but the difference is that a virtual medical scribe may have experience in the medical field. A remote medical scribe may also know more about medical terminology and culture, making them more efficient to work remotely with physicians who have more patients.
Benefits of hiring remote scribes for physicians
If you’re still on the fence about hiring a remote scribe, maybe you’ll change your mind after reading this list. There are many benefits of hiring virtual scribes, from flexibility to saved overhead costs and less time pressure in your practice:
1. Increasing patient loyalty
Patients can appreciate your full attention during a visit since a virtual scribe is already documenting your encounter for you.
As noted by the Medical Scribes Training Institute, when patients given quality care, they are more satisfied and more likely to follow your medical advice. You’ll also establish better patient loyalty.
2. Gives you more time for patient interaction
735 patients were interviewed for a 2018 study about the Association of Medical Scribes in Primary Care with Physician Workflow and Patient Experience.
During scribed visits, 57% of the respondents noticed less computer use by their healthcare providers. They also noted that their doctors spent more time communicating with them than usual.
Having more time to connect and engage with patients may also increase patient satisfaction.
3. More efficiency in the clinic workflow
Virtual scribes can bring more efficiency to your practice by ensuring the accuracy of your documentation. Keeping the accuracy of your encounters’ documentation is crucial for legal and billing purposes.
With a virtual scribe on your side, you can be more confident that you’ll minimize the risk of clerical errors, which could endanger your practice in more ways than one.
4. Saving overhead costs in the clinic
Since your scribes can work remotely, you can save on overhead costs such as office equipment, laptops, desks, and chairs. In fact, the Healthcare Business Club reports that physicians save $30,000 to $40,000 per year on office rent, utilities, and equipment maintenance.
Moreover, virtual scribes can scale their services according to physicians’ demands without the need to renovate the clinic or facility. You can spend these costs instead on great EHR and patient management systems such as Epic, Cerner, or AthenaHealth.
Each of these systems offers integration capabilities, data analytics, and intuitive interfaces. Even if your scribe hasn’t used them before, they can surely learn quickly in no time because of those tools’ user-friendliness.
5. Protecting your patients’ data security
Virtual medical scribes are trained to follow strict protocols for handling your patients’ sensitive information. They are trained to use encrypted communication and use secure data storage systems.
Agencies that supply virtual scribing services, such as DocVA, are adept at using highly secure patient management practices like two-factor authentications, security audits, and secure login credentials.
Scribes can also use video conferencing tools that comply with HIPAA regulations such as Zoom for Healthcare, Microsoft Teams, and Doxy.me.
Tools that help virtual scribes become more efficient
When hiring virtual scribes, you can gauge their competence and expertise by testing their proficiency with these tools:
Voice Recognition Software
Using Dragon Medical One, for example, help virtual scribes transcribe physicians’ spoken notes during the visit into the EHR, saving them time in documentation.
Electronic Health Record (EHR) Systems
This is where virtual scribes can input the patient’s information as well as their physician’s notes during the consultation. Tools like Epic, Cerner, and AthenaHealth are widely used in the healthcare industry.
Secure, HIPAA-approved platforms
Zoom for Healthcare or Doxy.me are two of the leading video conferencing tools that comply with HIPAA regulations. That means physicians can interact with scribes using these tools without worrying about their patient’s data being compromised.
Task Management Tools
Aside from documentation, a remote medical scribe may also do other tasks such as managing orders, following up with appointments, and entering orders for lab tests. This is where tools like Trello, Asana, or Monday can help. These tools allow scribes to manage their tasks in a Kanban board view, helping them easily track their progress on any given project.
Training programs
Virtual scribes can further make themselves valuable to the medical practice by enrolling into programs from organizations like the American Healthcare Documentation Professionals Group (AHDPG).
How a virtual medical scribe can help practices
A medical scribe can help medical practitioners become more productive, regardless of which field they belong to.
1. Family medicine
A virtual medical scribe can help physicians spend more time on direct patient care and prevent services. This greatly improves patient satisfaction since the physician can complete more consultations.
2. Cardiology
In this practice, the documentation includes a lot of highly detailed information, including diagnostic data and patient history. By getting virtual medical scribe services, you can accurately document your interaction with the patient and formulate more effective treatments for their patients.
3. Orthopedics
With the help of a virtual scribe, an orthopedic surgeon can quickly document surgical notes, patient histories, and follow-up visits. This frees up more time for them to interact with the patient and focus on doing surgical procedures.
4. Neurology
Neurologists can trust virtual scribes to document examinations and patient histories, which are pivotal to diagnosing a patient’s neurological condition.
5. Pediatrics
If conversing with the children is paramount to you, then hiring a remote scribe will definitely help you focus on your younger patients.
Who should you hire: an in-person scribe or a virtual scribe?
We understand it can get confusing if getting an in-person scribe is better than hiring a virtual scribe for your practice. And we’re going to give it you straight: a virtual scribe brings more benefits to your practice today than an in-person one, especially in the cost department.
Sure, an in-person could catch more non-verbal cues from the patient, which is required to be recorded by some practices. However, an alarming concern you could have about hiring an in-person scribe is their availability.
Unlike a remote medical scribe, they could become unavailable or late because of factors out of their control. For example, in-person scribes may arrive late or become unavailable due to a storm or power outage. A virtual medical scribe, on the other hand, can choose to work anywhere, as long as there’s stable HIPAA-compliant internet access.
Hire the best virtual scribes for your practice
Avoid experiencing burnout by delegating your admin tasks to our medical scribes.
Our virtual scribes are well-versed in medical terminology. They’ve also undergone specialty training, which means they can accurately document encounters between you and your patient.
Free yourself from the burden of fulfilling administrative tasks.
Contact us now to get started.
References:
American Medical Association
–https://edhub.ama-assn.org/steps-forward/module/2702619 (the link works, paste the link to the search bar)
– https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/sustainability/overlooked-benefits-medical-scribes
DocVA – https://docva.com/virtual-medical-scribes/
JAMA Network – https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2701617
Medical Economics – https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/scribes-can-provide-numerous-benefits-to-medical-practices
Northwest Career College – https://www.northwestcareercollege.edu/blog/what-is-medical-scribe/
