El Segundo, CA (PRWEB) May 05, 2014
Physicians who attended the Northwest Emergency Medicine Assembly in Seattle last week discovered a simple solution for one of the most complex healthcare challenges today: Transitioning to the electronic medical record (EMR).
Medical scribes are increasing in popularity among physicians looking for a way to adopt the EMR without sacrificing productivity or quality of patient interaction. Scribes chart in real time on the EMR, allowing the provider to interact better with patients instead of looking at the computer.
Medical Scribe Systems (MSS), a Los Angeles-based scribe vendor specializing in revenue cycle enhancement, showcased at the event with a video demonstrating how quickly and accurately scribes chart in the EMR.
“Physicians were impressed with the quality of documentation they saw in the video," says MSS President and CEO Garret Erskine. “They all knew what a scribe’s purpose was, but many of them didn’t realize what a profound impact they have on documentation and the physician-patient relationship.”
Physicians who have implemented the MSS scribe program experience many benefits, including:
- A significant decrease in downcoding
- An increase in patient throughput
- Reduced overtime hours
- Reduced patients who left without being seen (LWOBS)
- Improvements in HCAHPS and Press Ganey scores
Scribes are usually college students who use the position to gain clinical experience for medical or nursing school.
“It is a real-world classroom for pre-health students,” explains Erskine. “They immerse themselves in the clinical environment and get to help physicians reach their goals. Physicians enjoy working with our scribes because they can finally focus on patient care without getting buried under documentation.”
Medical Scribe Systems was established in 2004 by four emergency physicians and has since grown to nearly 100 hospitals nationwide, employing about 2,000 scribes. Board members Dr. Mark Richmond and Fred Brown, the former Chairman of The Joint Commission, helped establish the first guidelines for scribe use and compliance.
For more information about the MSS scribe program, visit http://www.medicalscribesystems.com or call (877) 819-5900 ext. 2.
