Evaluation of Medical Scribes’ effect on the Emergency Department’s productivity

Abstract

Abstract Introduction Emergency department length of stay or patient waiting time, is increasing in the emergency departments of Sweden. A contributing factor for the increasing patient waiting time is the administrative workload on the physicians, including electronic charting and order entries. A solution for more efficient documentation and administration is the hiring of medical scribes. The primary object of a medical scribe is to reduce the physician’s administrative workload and increase productivity. However, specific data investigating scribes’ benefits to physicians’ productivity are limited. Aim The aim of this study is to evaluate whether the productivity of physicians increases at the emergency department of Kungälv hospital following the introduction of medical scribes. The research question answered is: Has the number of assessed patients per hour per physician increased with a scribe compared to without a scribe? Methods & Data collection A prospective, before-after cohort study was conducted during 39 days in a community-based emergency department. Data was collected from scribed and non-scribed shifts worked by physicians during two different summer periods. We measured the physicians’ productivity by assessed patients per hour per physician. Statistical significance was assessed by Independent Samples t-test. Results We documented a total of 576 (72 shifts) physician-hours, with and without a scribe. The shifts with a scribe was associated with a significantly greater number of assessed patients per hour per physician, with an increase of 28%, from 0.56 to 0.84 (p < .001). Conclusion To our knowledge, this is the first conducted study of medical scribes in a Swedish emergency department. We conclude that scribes do increase physicians’ productivity by increasing number of assessed patients per hour per physician. Thus, scribes may offer a solution to increased productivity and decreased.