Hidden Benefits of Medical Scribes for Hospitals and Practices

Medical scribes are quickly becoming essential to the healthcare industry. Recent studies revealed that the presence of medical scribes can help healthcare providers offer better services to patients, which is why larger hospitals and medical institutions are already adding medical scribes to their workflows. For smaller practices, however, the decision to hire a medical scribe is often more difficult to make.

Budget constraints are still the biggest challenges faced by practices and smaller hospitals. However, there are some interesting hidden benefits that make hiring medical scribes an easy decision to make. We are going to review those benefits in this article.

Better Doctor-Patient Relationships

There is one thing that a lot of industry experts still don’t realize about the presence of medical scribes: they allow doctors and physicians to focus solely on the patients. This enables doctors to connect better to their patients, allowing better, stronger relationships to be forged over time.

Getting the full attention of a doctor always results in a better healthcare experience for patients. A slightly longer conversation, detailed questions and a more personalized approach are all made possible with a medical scribe handling the task of documenting everything.

It doesn’t stop there either. Patients also appreciate more thorough and structured medical records. Combined with the use of Electronic Health Records or EHRs, medical scribes bring a lot of value to a practice or a medical institution.

Cost Savings

As mentioned earlier, budget constraints are often the reasons why smaller hospitals and private practices don’t really hire medical scribes. According to the latest study by the Journal of the American Medical Association, however, medical scribes actually allow healthcare providers to lower the costs of healthcare services substantially.

For example, a doctor can now spend a relatively shorter amount of time with a patient while still providing a high quality service. Since doctors and nurses no longer have to spend time writing down and processing information, they can focus on the more important tasks at hand.

The average time needed for a new patient visit can be lowered all the way to 30 minutes from the older average of 40 minutes without the help of medical scribes. That 10-minute difference actually helps hospitals save more than $2,000 per patient over time. Since medical scribes also increase clinical satisfaction, the improved turnaround times are even more valuable for hospitals and private practices in the long run.

Easier Recruitment Process

Let’s not forget that getting medical scribes to join your team is also easier than ever. A lot of specialists, including companies like Elite Medical Scribes, are now offering access to trained and experienced medical scribes. This effectively lowers the cost of hiring scribes substantially, making them more accessible even to smaller hospitals and private practices.

These benefits, combined with the main benefits offered by medical scribes in general, definitely make hiring scribes a valuable decision that is easy to make. Regardless of the challenges you face, having an experienced scribe – or a team of medical scribes – helping you to provide better healthcare services is well worth the investment.