The Medical Scribe industry is a vital part of modern US healthcare. It emerged a few decades ago due to rising complexity of medical documentation requirements from providers, adoption of electronic health records and a growing focus on patient centric care.
A Medical scribe is a professional/software that assists healthcare providers in creating real-time documentation for their patient encounters.
They help make sure that every detail of doctor-patient interactions are carefully recorded. They are an extension of the physician’s right hand, documenting medical history, diagnostic testing and results while in-office visits occur. This role involves extensive note taking and documentation, with a very high accuracy and requires high attention to detail.
By taking care of real-time updates on new patient charts, lab results, and imaging, scribes allow physicians to see up to 3-5 patients concurrently. This increases physician productivity and improves patient care. With a scribe present, physicians spend 40% more time engaging with patients, creating a better experience such as through eye contact and conversation.
Medical scribes play a vital role in improving the speed and quality of documentation to support patient care in the clinical environment. This meticulous documentation gives healthcare providers the opportunity to prioritize patient care, improving quality of service and increasing patient satisfaction.
As the healthcare industry continues to advance alongside technology with an increased focus on patient-care, medical scribes have an increasingly important role.
A few decades ago, medical scribes were defined as humans who would participate in clinical documentation processes for a provider. The definition however has evolved significantly with the advent of new technologies. Today, medical scribing services are delivered not just by humans but by AI. In fact, over the last 2 years, there has been a proliferation in the number of companies offering AI scribe services.
Let’s take a deeper look into some of the key responsibilities that a medical scribe has.
Medical scribes take detailed notes about what happens at each patient visit. This includes:
These duties help make sure patient data is orderly and readily available, allowing for more informed decision-making by healthcare providers.
Patient histories - Example: Past medical records
Lab results - Example: Blood tests, imaging reports
Physical exam notes - Example: Observations, vitals
Treatment plans - Example: Prescriptions, follow-ups
In many cases, medical scribes are key members of the care team who ensure critical data is entered into Electronic Health Records (EHR). With their ability to document in real-time, always having the most up-to-date and accurate patient information is critical to patient safety and care.
With complex and time-consuming data entry handled by scribes, healthcare providers have more time to devote to the patient interaction. That change greatly increases the efficiency of their work.
Medical Scribes sometimes are involved in pre-charting. They document patient questionnaires, capture vitals and prepare documentation encompassing patient history ahead of the physician consultation
Today the role and definition of medical scribes has evolved significantly. Let’s look at the different types of medical scribes that providers can choose from.
In-person scribes work alongside clinicians in patient care settings, including hospitals and outpatient clinics. They provide immediate in-person documentation assistance in the exam room, recording important information to create comprehensive, high-quality medical records.
By having a scribe alongside them, healthcare providers can be more present with their patients, improving communication and quality of care. On the hospital side, scribes handle the documentation of patient history and the course of treatment. Their contributions are especially important in high tempo settings where every second counts.
They are usually medical students, residents or nurses who are part of the physician’s medical teams.
Although they can work with high accuracy, attrition could be an issue that a lot of providers face when employing in-person human scribes as they often tend to leave once their residency is over for higher studies.
Medical scribes are often the unsung heroes of our healthcare team, playing a vital role in clinical documentation. These professionals work individually with physicians, adapting to various providers’ styles, which enhances the capabilities of all medical personnel, from emergency department services to private practice doctors. This teamwork ensures every patient receives continuity of care, making the medical scribe profession essential in the medical field.
Virtual scribes, as the name suggests, work remotely, providing real-time or offline documentation from a different location. These services are usually outsourced to scribing companies that employ human scribes usually at a different geographical location. .
This industry has been around for almost two decades. Technology involves sharing recordings of the actual encounters with humans sitting in a different location who then transcribe the documents based on the recording. Virtual human scribes are usually more affordable than in-person scribes but most of them are not physicians or clinicians. Therefore, accuracy related challenges could be real and the burden of reviewing the work falls on the physician. More importantly, there are real constraints in sharing unstructured recordings with virtual scribes as the burden of condensing a full encounter transcript into a medically relevant clinical note can be high.
Turnaround time is also a challenge with virtual human scribes. The documentation process can take 24 hours - 48 hours to complete in many cases.
AI-powered scribes are a new and growing trend and can provide an exciting solution to documentation challenges that remain unsolved by human scribes. These systems are capable of processing large volumes of unstructured patient interactions and converting them into structured meaningful clinical documentation within minutes.
AI scribes are 10-100x more affordable than human scribes and can generate documentation with an accuracy north of 96%. With the advent of large language models, the spectrum of complexity that AI can deal with has increased significantly and the output for providers with complex workflows especially specialties such as neurology, oncology, critical care etc. has been unprecedented.
This field is very exciting and the advancement in technology every day is only going to make the role of AI scribes indispensable in years to come.
AI medical scribes will play a significant role in reducing not just physician but clinician burnout. The ability to skim through copious amounts of data within minutes is unparalleled and will free up humans to focus on patient care.
AI scribes are here to stay and what needs to be seen is how quickly they can adapt to complex workflows of healthcare providers especially specialists. Although they possess the ability to transcribe at a very high speed and accuracy, the jury is out on how they will compete with humans on capturing the complex nuances in documentation that a medically trained human can do more intuitively.
There has been a proliferation in the number of AI scribes in the market over the last 2 years but softwares that can provide customization on note styles, outputs as well as workflows could emerge as winners as the dust settles in the next couple of years.
We recommend looking for a solution that can offer deep personalization at the document level as well as adapt seamlessly to your workflows.
Personalization for documentation is a complex technical feat and scribes that cater to specific specialties tend to perform better than scribes that have a one size fits all approach.
Workflow integration entails deep integration with your EHR and providing the ability for multiple users from your team to collaborate on documentation.
In essence, a good fit is an AI scribe that adapts to your workflows rather than the other way around.
Marvix AI scribe is suited exclusively for needs of specialties and provides deep customizations and workflow integrations.
You can book a cuztomised demo and try Marvix for free for a month today.
Book a demo here.
Medical scribes play a vital role in improving the speed and quality of documentation to support patient care in the clinical environment. They document patient information, assist with data entry, and help with pre-charting.
The key responsibilities of a medical scribe include documenting patient information, assisting with data entry into Electronic Health Records (EHRs), and helping with pre-charting.
AI scribes can integrate with EHRs systems through APIs, allowing for seamless data exchange and reducing the need for manual data entry.
Healthcare providers should look for AI-powered scribe solutions that offer deep personalization, seamless workflow integration, and the ability to adapt to specific clinical workflows and documentation requirements. Verify that the AI scribe solution meets all relevant data security and compliance standards, including HIPAA.
Yes, AI-powered scribes like Marvix AI can adapt to complex workflows and specialties, including neurology, oncology, and critical care.
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