Educating the Next Generation of Clinicians – MDs, NPs, PAs

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Can you identify the similarity between Medical Scribes, Medical Assistants, and Patient Care Technicians? They all play a role in fostering the ambition and growth of future physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants.

When a student pairs with a physician to assist them with their note-taking, they benefit, as does the physician. With artificial intelligence (AI), no one is being prepared to be a better future physician.

Read more about how The Creator of Medical Scribing is Bringing Back the Human Element

“It’s supposed to be a great symbiotic relationship. Scribes can be educated and learn about medicine and an opportunity to learn from several different positions,” says Dr. Elliott Trotter, Founder of ScribeNest. “For the physicians, we get help documenting and being organized while walking through the emergency department. That takes things that are non-doctoring off of the physician so that they are able to be a physician.”

In addition to bedside manner, the scribe can see how abstract academic learning in pre-med classes plays out in a hospital or physician’s office. Before formal medical schools, this apprenticeship model was how people learned medicine. Combining it with formal education has produces impressive results, Trotter says. “I had call from the dean of the Emory University Medical School and he said, ‘We have a student here she’s your former scribe, and she knows more than a second year resident.’ By the time these students get to get to medical, PA, or nursing school, they run circles around their competition because they already know what it’s supposed to look like.”

With the clinical workforce at a crisis point across virtually all direct care roles, it’s smart to keep this in mind.

2 New Patients a Day Drive Medical Scribe Profitability

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Medical Scribe Profitability. The objective of an Annals of Internal Medicine study entitled, The Productivity Requirements of Implementing a Medical Scribe Program determined the number of additional patient visits various specialties would need to recover the costs of implementing scribes in their practice at 1 year.

The study determined that an average of 1.34 additional new patient visits per day (295 per year) were required to recover medical scribe costs (range, 0.89 [cardiology] to 1.80 [orthopedic surgery] new patient visits per day).  For returning patients, an average of 2.15 additional visits per day (472 per year) were required (range, 1.65 [cardiology] to 2.78 [orthopedic surgery] returning visits per day). The addition of 2 new patient (or 3 returning) visits per day was profitable for all specialties.

Scribe costs were based on literature review and a third-party contractor model. Revenue was calculated from direct visit billing, CPT (Current Procedural Terminology) billing, and data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey.

To make the medical scribe program profitable after one year, physicians from all specialties had to see two new or three returning patients each day. This was calculated with the assumption that physicians and other health professionals would work 220 eight-hour clinic days per year and that scribe shifts mirrored that schedule.

“Providing a scribe right now might actually be the thing that keeps your providers from saying, ‘I’m going to retire. I’m opting out,’” said Dr. Laiteerapong. “If we don’t have some sort of tool that can help people with their notes right now, you could end up losing a good chunk of the workforce.”

“People could say, ‘Oh, we’re going to wait to invest in scribes later,’” she said. But “there may not be a later for many of those physicians.”

For all specialties, modest increases in productivity due to scribes may allow physicians to see more patients and offset scribe costs, making scribe programs revenue-neutral.

Learn more about our Develop Your Own Scribe(s) Program

Paid Work That Impresses Medical Schools

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What impresses medical schools?  The requirements for premed students are constantly stacking higher and higher

Between prerequisite coursework, extracurricular activities, the MCAT, CASPer, and more, it can be incredibly difficult for premeds to find time for all of their obligations. This becomes especially difficult when students have to work to generate income for themselves or their families.

A medical scribe works alongside physicians and assists in the documentation of patient visits. Scribing can allow a premed student to get close doctor interaction while gaining skills in medical documentation, terminology, and treatment plans.

Scribes also may get some direct patient interaction. Though this position requires specific training, there are many positions available once it is completed and scribing can even be done remotely.

Read the full US News and World Report article here.

Study Confirms Benefits of Scribe Use Similar Pre and Post Covid-19

National Institute of Health (NIH) study entitled, Medical Scribe Impact on Provider Efficiency in Outpatient Radiation Oncology Clinics Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Medical documentation has become increasingly challenging for providers, particularly with time constraints and changes to office visit formats during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Medical scribes may help mitigate this burden. The objective of the survey was to determine how scribes affect provider workflow efficiency during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to pre-pandemic controls.

The conclusion of the study shows that scribe use decreases provider time spent on medical documentation and improves overall efficiency. This improvement in clinical efficiency was similar before and during the COVID-19 pandemic for both in-person and telemedicine clinic visits. Integration of scribes into radiation oncology clinics may improve provider satisfaction by reducing the burden of documentation and may improve provider well-being.

Click here to read more…

7 tips to avoid a malpractice suit, according to experts

Tips To Avoid Malpractice Suit:

  1. Establish a trusting relationship
  2. Communicate the diagnosis and treatment plan
  3. Chart everything
  4. Listen to others on your medical team
  5. Refer when appropriate
  6. Adhere to protocol
  7. Obtain informed consent

So what can you do to make the most of your time with patients? One place to start is by reviewing your patients’ charts before entering the room so you are not spending precious minutes playing catch-up. Once inside the exam room, if you find yourself spending too much time documenting in the EHR—ie, looking at a screen rather than making eye contact with your patient—consider using a medical scribe for data entry.

Read the entire MSLinx article

New Study: The Future of Medical Scribes Documenting in the Electronic Health Record

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Medical Scribe Study:  The authors of a recent study by BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making “state that no other shadowing opportunity allows pre-medical students to be as immersed in medicine as scribing.

Furthermore, the study also stated, “We also saw internal pressures to the system. The most notable of these could be the increased use of alternative models of scribing. This could entail the increased employment of non-medical school-bound individuals or MAs/LPNs/RNs, which would decrease the need for the popular pre-professional scribing model.”

In conclusion, Many experts thought that if the scribe role could be expanded to allow scribes to document more or take on more informatics activities, it would be beneficial. With COVID-19 continuing to change workflows, it is critical that medical scribes receive standardized training as tele-scribing continues to grow in popularity and new roles for scribes as medical team members are identified.

Read the entire BMC Medical Informatics and Decision-Making study

How to Become a Doctor: A Step-by-Step Guide

Participate in Meaningful Extracurricular Activities

How to become a doctor – aspiring physicians should gain some clinical experience to see if they would enjoy practicing medicine.

A premed who does well in his or her courses but does nothing else is unlikely to get noticed by and admitted into top medical schools. So it’s important that prospective med students do something besides study, experts say.

However, the quality of a person’s activities outside the classroom matters much more than either the quantity of activities or the number of hours devoted to those activities.

Substantive scholarly research or a job as either a medical scribe or a medical assistant tends to be viewed positively in the admissions process, med school admissions officers say. They also suggest that accomplishments in nonscientific or nonmedical endeavors such as music or athletics are an asset since they make a candidate appear to be well-rounded and suggest that he or she is an interesting person.

Read the entire US NEWS article here.

Are Human Scribes Truly Effective for Safe EHR Documentation?

Providers said human scribes helped avoid burnout, were more efficient than an EHR scribe, and eased charting for clinicians.

November 02, 2020 – A well-trained human scribe doing EHR documentation can boost patient safety and decrease clinician burden, according to a study published in The Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA).

Clinician burnout runs rampant throughout the healthcare industry. According to the American Medical Association, the physician burnout rate is about 44 percent, which is much higher than in other professions. That burnout is closely linked with EHR use and demanding reporting burden.

Read the article here

Study provides new solution to offset the cost of medical scribes

Requirements for electronic health records (EHR) are greater now than ever, and that burden is exacerbating the problem of physician burnout. However, there might be a solution: the medical scribe.

New research led by Neda Laiteerapong MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago Medicine, indicates the real value of adding this healthcare professional to a medical practice.

Read the entire article here

52,800 healthcare jobs added in September; hospitals see job loss

Healthcare added 52,800 jobs in September, with hospitals losing jobs for the first month since May, according to the latest jobs report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The September count marks the fifth consecutive month the industry has added jobs. However, it is down from the 75,300 healthcare jobs added in August and the 125,500 healthcare jobs added in July. It is also down from 358,000 healthcare jobs added in June and 312,400 healthcare jobs added in May.

Within ambulatory healthcare services, dentist offices saw 3,900 new jobs, physician offices saw 18,200 job gains, and home health services had 16,200 job gains last month.

Hospitals lost 6,400 jobs in September, compared to 14,000 job gains in August, 27,400 job gains in July and 6,700 job gains in June. Prior to June, hospitals lost 26,700 jobs in May and 134,900 jobs in April. 

Nursing and residential care facilities gained 1,600 jobs last month, compared to 13,700 jobs lost in August and 28,100 jobs lost in July.

Overall, the U.S. added 661,000 jobs in September, marking the fifth consecutive month of gains, but a decrease from 1.4 million jobs added in August and 1.8 million jobs added in July. The unemployment rate also fell to 7.9 percent in September, compared to 8.4 percent in August and 10.2 percent in July.

Read the original article here…

Gooch, Kelly. “52,800 Healthcare Jobs Added in September; Hospitals See Job Loss.” Becker’s Hospital Review, 2 Oct. 2020, www.beckershospitalreview.com/workforce/52-800-healthcare-jobs-added-in-august-hospitals-see-job-loss.html.