The Los Angeles Times printed an interesting article about the rising use of medical scribes - young, often pre-med students - who follow physicians on their rounds to input notes into the hospital's EMR system.

Business is booming apparently, a by-product of more and more hospitals implementing EMR systems. There are many obvious benefits for scribes, hospitals and physicians. With any transition, especially one that involves significant technology, workflow and cultural changes, productivity plummets. Medical scribes are being used to mitigate the drop in productivity, thereby saving the hospital money. Physicians can focus on the patient and not worry about the learning curve. Scribes gain invaluable experience.

So what's the downside? The first is any time you have an intermediary you risk the potential for inaccurate information, which could impact patient safety.

More importantly, the practice prolongs or even prevents physicians from learning how to use the EMR. Maybe that’s okay for physicians who will be leaving their profession within the next five or so years. Completely relying on medical scribes leaves other physicians at a disadvantage on many levels. If they need tech support or access to information, they must rely on the medical scribe. If everyone in their profession is migrating to the paperless world, they become dinosaurs in their field and the lack of EMR training or experience may hinder professional movement.

It makes sense, however, if using medical scribes is a hospital's short-term practice. Once the healthcare industry reaches critical mass with EMR adoption, the medical scribes used as EMR intermediaries may need to evolve for sustainability.

Photo by Ivo Jansch courtesy of Creative Commons license.