Resources

The notorious demands of documentation. If you’re a clinician, you are more than acutely aware of just how much time and energy goes into keeping every patient encounter well-documented. From analyzing medical histories to reviewing test results and handling medication requests to composing treatment plans, there’s simply no room for omission when it comes to documentation.

The breaking point. It’s a place where no one wants to find themselves, but it’s a familiar destination for many healthcare workers today. Whether you’re spread too thin, because of documentation demands, or the global pandemic has left you with the weight of the world on your shoulders, it’s important to know when to seek some support.

Chances are, if you’re scoping out Virtual Scribe options, you’re probably wondering what services are available—and more importantly, which ones may work best for you. We’ve got you covered.

Time. It’s something we all wish we had more of in one aspect of our lives or another. But, for many clinicians, more time for their personal lives seems harder than ever to come by. For them, more time is not just of the essence. It’s of the necessity.

The term “work-life balance” is so commonplace that the Oxford dictionary has decided to permanently include it among its pages. Defined as, “The number of hours per week you spend working, compared with the number of hours you spend with your family, relaxing, etc.”, this phrase is more popular than ever among members of today’s workforce.

Physicians make their money and make a difference by seeing patients. Yet doctors and their support staff are spending more and more time with documentation and administrative work. This has led to record levels of burn-out among healthcare professionals.

On a sunny afternoon in May, 2015, I joined a dozen other surgeons at a downtown Boston office building to begin sixteen hours of mandatory computer training. We sat in three rows, each of us parked behind a desktop computer. In one month, our daily routines would come to depend upon mastery of Epic, the new medical software system on the screens in front of us. The upgrade from our home-built software would cost the hospital system where we worked, Partners HealthCare, a staggering $1.6 billion, but it aimed to keep us technologically up to date.

Physicians are spending twice as much time on electronic health records as they are face to face with patients, according to a new study by the American Medical Association.

Researchers observed 57 physicians in four specialties (family medicine, internal medicine, cardiology, and orthopedics) and found that for every hour of direct clinical face time with patients, nearly 2 additional hours is spent on EHR and desk work within the clinic day.

Some clinicians are turning to medical scribes to reduce the time spent managing electronic health records (EHRs). In fact, incorporating medical scribes into surgical practice increases the number of patients seen, according to research findings presented at the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress 2019.