1. Scribe Impacts on Provider Experience, Operations, and Teaching in an Academic Emergency Medicine Practice
- Author
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Hess, Jeremy J., Wallenstein, Joshua, Ackerman, Jeremy D, Akhter, Murtaza, Ander, Douglas, Keadey, Matthew T., and Capes, James P.
- Subjects
Emergency medicine ,scribes ,academic medical center ,clinical productivity ,medical education - Abstract
Introduction: Physicians dedicate substantial time to documentation. Scribes are sometimes used to improve efficiency by performing documentation tasks, although their impacts have not been prospectively evaluated. Our objective was to assess a scribe program’s impact on emergency department (ED) throughput, physician time utilization, and job satisfaction in a large academic emergency medicine practice.Methods: We evaluated the intervention using pre- and post-intervention surveys and administrative data. All site physicians were included. Pre- and post-intervention data were collected in four-month periods one year apart. Primary outcomes included changes in monthly average ED length of stay (LOS), provider-specific average relative value units (RVUs) per hour (raw and normalized to volume), self-reported estimates of time spent teaching, self-reported estimates of time spent documenting, and job satisfaction. We analyzed data using descriptive statistics and appropriate tests for paired pre-post differences in continuous, categorical, and ranked variables.Results: Pre- and post-survey response rates were 76.1% and 69.0%, respectively. Most responded positively to the intervention, although 9.5% reported negative impressions. There was a 36% reduction (25%-50%; p
- Published
- 2015