Most of my experience has been in primary care working for family medicine and internal medicine doctors. You’ll get to see what tests physicians order for which symptoms, as well as the variety of treatments they provide for different ailments and conditions. This provides great exposure to medical decision-making for scribes seeking experience for advanced healthcare careers. Some of these responsibilities include reporting the quality codes mentioned earlier, as well as putting in orders and charges, all under the physician’s close supervision, of course. In clinics, scribes may have more responsibilities since the pace is slower and patients are more likely to be stable. I’ve worked in a variety of settings and specialties, but the biggest distinction I’ve seen is between scribing in clinics and scribing in hospitals. This is where the scribe comes in! What Does a Medical Scribe Do in Clinics? Worse yet, many patients are upset when their doctor spends most of a visit looking at the computer. Add in all the reporting codes mentioned above, and it can really slow them down. There’s no computer equivalent yet for the notoriously bad handwriting of physicians that helped them work so quickly before, so there is often a drastic decrease in efficiency when doctors are forced to bumble through the computer on top of seeing patients. Doctors are very unhappy with EMR software because it makes them spend more and more time with computers and less time with patients. In many cases, physicians being forced to document and code visits on their own has been a nightmare. There can be a lot of variation in the way scribes are used. Medical scribes help doctors have more face time with patients while the scribe completes the EMR and performs other clerical duties. These codes are used to document the status and treatment of certain conditions and provide important data for entities such as insurance companies. In addition to traditional documentation, there are numerous quality codes that must be reported for most patients. This has eliminated the need in many settings for transcriptionists, who were previously the bridge between paper charts and electronic charts. While it’s nothing new to have computers in healthcare, it is only recently that federal mandates have stripped physicians of their precious paper charts and declared that information must be entered directly into an electronic medical/health record (EMR or EHR). Maximum utilization of computers in healthcare means massive improvements in several domains, including cost, availability of information, and most importantly, patient care. Why does the healthcare industry need scribes, and why now? Like many other industries, the electronic age has redefined the way things are done in healthcare. Why does the healthcare industry need scribes, and why now?īefore looking more closely at the different tasks a medical scribe may do, there’s an important question to answer. It is a challenging job, but can be very rewarding to those who can mix their typing skills and medical knowledge in a high-pressure environment that can be physically and emotionally taxing. Working as a medical scribe provides an experience that is nearly as close to the clinical action one can be, yet not quite hands-on. While the scribe occupation may not have been very common in recent times, it is making a resurgence! Make no mistake, scribing has risen from its previous ancient image and been adopted by the healthcare industry to lighten the burden on healthcare providers as medicine transitions into the electronic age. The ability of scribes to record information has made them vital to society throughout history. The word scribe makes many people think of ancient times. ![]() ![]() In my experience scribing since 2011, this is partially true of what healthcare scribes do, but a great understatement of their overall impact. “Real-time transcriptionist” is one way a doctor has described me to a patient wondering who was following their physician into the exam room. Following physicians while they see patients, medical scribes document everything that happens in the patient’s electronic chart using a computer. They document important information! There are some nuances between settings, facilities, specialties, and preferences of different healthcare providers, but the premise remains the same. What does a medical scribe do? The most fundamental role of a medical scribe is virtually unchanged from that of ancient scribes.
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