Scribe Solutions will attend the American Academy of Emergency Medicine's 21st Scientific Assembly. This conference will be held in Austin, Texas and will run from February 28th through March 4th. 

Interested in hiring medical scribes? Do you have staffing needs in terms of EMR documentation? Scribe Solutions can help! Feel free to stop by the Scribe booth to speak with a representative from our company and to grab an information packet.

BOOTH 302 is where Scribe will be! 

Would you like some background on EMR and medical scribes now to see if scribes might be right for you?

Read this information segment below and then stop by our booth at AAEM in a few weeks...we'll see you then! 

Connection Between Scribes and EMR:

By definition provided by the U.S government Health IT website, an electronic medical record (EMR) is a digital version of a paper chart that contains all of a patient’s medical history from one practice. An EMR is mostly used by providers for diagnosis and treatment.

EMRs are more beneficial than paper records because EMRs lead to improved efficiency and organization of records. Digital management systems for tracking patient care and maintaining that patients are properly informed about their health via online records is key to keeping up in the digital age.

Using EMRs can be overwhelming to doctors who are more accustomed to paper charts. 

This is where the scribes come in! Medical scribes focus on completing all of the electronic record work while the physician focuses on the patient.

According to the American College of Emergency Physicians the following are the main duties of scribes:

• to follow a physician through his or her work day and chart patient encounters in real-time using a medical office's Electronic Health Record and existing templates

• generate referral letters for physicians, manage and sort medical documents within the EHR system, and assist with e-prescribing

  Thus, by handling data management tasks, scribes allow physicians to have more time with patients and to better manage their patient treatment time.

According to a new study by global consulting firm Accenture, consumers with chronic illnesses are less bothered by privacy concerns tied to EMR. Instead, the chronically ill are more concerned about the privacy of shopping and banking transactions than EMR and healthcare records. 

The study's research shows that more than half (51 percent) of the U.S. chronically ill (consumers who have chronic conditions) feel that the benefits of accessing medical records electronically outweigh any risks of privacy invasion. In this study, titled the Accenture 2014 Patient Engagement Survey, more than 2,000 U.S. consumers were polled. A unique fact was uncovered in the study, that when it comes to perceived risks in terms of privacy and EMR, the opinions on the matter varied based on specific chronic illnesses of each type of patient in the survey. 

The highest percentage of patients believing that EMR benefits outweigh the risks were those with cancer (57 percent). Other patients that were surveyed had smaller percentages of belief on the risks versus benefits of EMR; asthma and arthritis patients weighed in at a 48 percent belief that benefits of electronic health record sharing outweigh perceived risks. Another key finding in this study is that patients expressed their desire for access to EMRs, revealing their belief in the right to access their EMR, with 69 percent saying that having access to their health data is a human right. 

Additionally, Accenture's findings indicate that it is clear that people, especially those with chronic conditions, want access to their health records. But, as fedeal legislation supports the shift to EMR, it will be interesting to discover just how many patients will shift to accessing their records via EMR technology. While the switch to EMR may seem daunting to many practitioners and patients alike, medical scribes can ease the transition to EMR. Meaningful Use Stage 2 is here, so this topic is pertinent. Scribes can help improve efficiency in healthcare practices and organizations. Combining new technology with the added resource of a scribe can increase efficiency and aid in the better documentation of patient health records. 

Recent reports show that ICD-10 may not break the bank as badly as the AMA once predicted, but the new code set still presents a number of challenges to financially vulnerable healthcare organizations. 

ICD-10 and Big Data

Some doctors might find ICD-10 to include too many codes, but these codes and the new advances of ICD-10 are necessary for big data success in the medical field.

According to resident physician William Rusnak as quoted in a FierceHealth IT article, "doctors will never detect the one-in-a-million disease when it matters". 

Change isn't always easy, but it is here to stay. ICD-10 will be beneficial to doctors and in the big picture the shift to ICD-10 can allow for more efficient and precise coding.

The resident physician quoted in the article, Rusnak, went on to explain the big data benefits of ICD-10, emphasizing that with advanced computing power that can accurately record human behavior, ICD-10 can aid in crucial healthcare situations and lead to further efficiency. 

Rusnak states that there needs to be a code for even the rarest condition that a patient may have, and that a code should represent specific details of any procedures performed as well.

Following Rusnak's advice that codes need to represent all conditions and procedures and even the variations of both, doctors can then collect big data in a precise manner. 

This, in turn, will lead to proper and more accurate decisionmaking when reporting on health. 

ICD-10 will help with big data because the coding will lead to clear-cut reporting on health events and outcomes. 

Meaningful Use was created in order to create infrastructure for the health information system in American medical industry today.

The various stages were thought out and decided upon in order to ensure successful EHR use to establish an electronic health information network in the United States.

• Stage 1 - this stage was established for data capture and sharing to start taking place

• Stage 2 - this stage, began in January 2014, and intends to advance processes

• Stage 3 - this stage leads to improved outcomes

Requirements for Providers:

When looking at requirements for providers, these must be broken down into Medicare program requirements and Medicaid program requirements.

• Medicare program meaningful use requirements include 13 core measures that must be met and 5 of 9 optional measures. A 90 day reporting period to execute against goals of the program is also required.

• Medicaid program requirements include showing proof that the practice has purchased and installed a government certified EHR and after 1 year the practice must then meet the medicare requirements also with the 13 core measures.

Meaningful Use and its requirements intend to allow for progress tracking and more connectivity.

While using EHR will improve connectivity and is the way of the future, it is a lot of work for practices and physicians. But, it doesn't have to be! Scribes can help.

• Our medical scribes here at Scribe Solutions perform all the data entry work but also can assist in other services such as tracking labs, transcribing radiology reports, attending to patient needs, and helping physicians organize data.

• Scribe Solutions understands the demands that physicians face and offers a low cost, innovative approach to significantly improve the process of patient care.

As most of you probably know, Meaningful Use is rooted in the HITECH act. If you don't already know or understand the HITECH act, here is a "snippet" from Health and Human Services website:

The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, was signed into law on February 17, 2009, to promote the adoption and meaningful use of health information technology.  Subtitle D of the HITECH Act addresses the privacy and security concerns associated with the electronic transmission of health information, in part, through several provisions that strengthen the civil and criminal enforcement of the HIPAA rules.  

HITECH act allows for financial incentives for EHR use. The goals behind these incentives include the desire by the U.S. Government to have an efficient and centralized National Health Information Network and better quality care for patients. 

To qualify for government's financial incentives, the practices need to demonstrate meaningful use and purchase and use of a government certified EHR system. Physicians must meet all meaningful use requirements to qualify for incentives from the government. 

See more info here at CMS.gov 

You may be surprised to learn that the majority of U.S. medical records are not available electronically. Despite this alarming fact, the U.S. medical industry is increasingly switching to EHR. According to the American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC), in 2008, fewer than 10% of hospitals utilized a basic EHR system.

But, by 2009, doctors and hospitals were starting to adapt and began to switch to EMR due to funding from the stimulus from Medicare and Medicaid payments. 

The EMR switch is sweeping the U.S. medical space, with 60% of hospitals having adopted at least a basic EHR system today, according to AJMC. 

Health IT is becoming more important each and every day. As doctors and hospitals become more and more accountable to the quality of the care they provide to patients, high-tech, high-performing electronic medical records will be key to successful treatment and management of patients.  

EHR Benefits are Visible

It is now becoming even more apparent that EHR as a whole is positively impacting the healthcare industry.

Specifically, when it comes to EHR alerts, these benefits are highly visible. Now, with new EHR alert systems in place, results are being seen in a variety of areas. One area is HIV testing. The implementation of EHR alert and documentation has increased regular HIV testing rates at multiple facilities. Two places that have seen astounding results from EHR alerts are New Orleans and New York City. This news of increased HIV testing rates due to EHR alerts can only bolster the health IT industry and lead to more screening of this disease, but also others. There is a clear, strong, future for the use of EHR alerts in modern health care.

See some results from the use of alerts in New Orleans and New York:

• LSU Hospital - in the emergency dept. rise from 17% in 2012 to 26% in Dec. 2013 for HIV screening 

• In New Orleans urgent care center - rise from 3% in 2012 to 17% in Dec. 2013

• Urban Health Plan with 16 facilities in New York City saw an increase in HIV testing from 8% to 56% over a three year period 

Revenue Cycles and Hospital Management

Often times one might not associate revenue cycles with hospitals, because hospitals are many times understaffed and lacking resources, thus making revenue cycle management difficult.

But this is constantly changing and hospitals are becoming, and have become, more efficient.

Yes, hospitals are places where patients receive treatment - pretty clear definition. But, when it comes to managing hospitals, one thing always arises and is a key component to most, if not all, decisions made when operating hospitals.

With the new federal mandates, comes more and more EHR implementations, and coming from this is meaningful use and ICD-10 and their associated changes. Some see these changes as burdensome, but with the help of medical scribes, these new changes can actually lead to more streamlining and efficiency, and to better doctor patient interaction.

Despite some hospitals viewing EHRs and electronic charting in general as a hassle, some hospitals are actually profiting more from these changes. Revenue cycle management and financial metrics are important to hospital administrators, and though new changes may lead to new organization and management of health care, as seen in analysis, using EHRs and medical scribes can lead to growing profits. EHRs can clearly be productivity-boosting and especially so when viewing EHR through the lens of patient coordination.

For more info on this click here to see an article by EHR Intelligence.

Patient Satisfaction & Thoughts on Improvement

Hospitals can always improve when it comes to patient satisfaction.

Administrators and consultants are always looking for ways to become an even better provider to their patients. With ever changing technology and new requirements for documentation, it can make it even more difficult to achieve high patient satisfaction. As a writer for MedCity News put it, “ I’ve felt that there’s not been enough next-generation tech being applied to the low margin, high volume business of hospital supply management.” Supply chain automation is important to gain higher patient satisfaction, and even though it is often viewed as being the responsibility of the administration, it is directly tied to patient and nursing satisfaction.

• Supply chain expert Harold Richards explains that thinking about patient satisfaction and supply chain can be compared to ant hill management:“You may have had an ant farm as a child and marveled at the cooperative efforts and precisions of the ants as they went about their daily activities...so it is with the hospital supply chain, full of hard working individuals who run into daily challenges just as ants do. Both rely on excellent systems of communication to get things accomplished. However, ants do not have to deal with bureaucracy, integrating of mismatched systems, missing supplies, and other time-wasting system failures (at least not as far as we can tell).”

The ant farm comparison seems to be on point when it comes to managing busy ER departments and the like. Today more than ever, patients are converging on emergency rooms across the country seeking treatment for their ailments. Resulting from this is - you guessed it- overcrowded ERs filled to capacity and short staffed in many cases. According to the USA TODAY, some hospitals are faced with spikes as high as 12%.

It is apparent that an increase in volume can cause problems, and without proper planning and supply chain management, there could be inefficiencies such as shortage of staff and medical supplies in emergency situations. So, look at hospital management from the ant farm perspective if you will...it might just make it a little clearer...and little more fun to analyze efficiency. Make sure you know what is happening in your ant hill.