Many of us, scientists, have been very excited about the opportunity to finally get closer to the "learning health system" because of the broader adoption of EHRs in recent years. Finally, we could run our natural language processing programs, data mining algorithms, and predictive models to find opportunities for improvement.
However, as this JAMA article shows, it actually turns out that many healthcare organizations have started to hire medical scribes who will enter data under the supervision of a clinician. This solution was adopted because physicians can treat more patients or spend more time with patients.
On the other hand, the data entry by medical scribes raises a range of issues from accuracy to interpretability. Check out this article:
http://my.umbc.edu/groups/hit/documents/7312
As far as I know, there are no federal/state laws prohibiting this kind of arrangement.
What can be/should be done? What do you think?
However, as this JAMA article shows, it actually turns out that many healthcare organizations have started to hire medical scribes who will enter data under the supervision of a clinician. This solution was adopted because physicians can treat more patients or spend more time with patients.
On the other hand, the data entry by medical scribes raises a range of issues from accuracy to interpretability. Check out this article:
http://my.umbc.edu/groups/hit/documents/7312
As far as I know, there are no federal/state laws prohibiting this kind of arrangement.
What can be/should be done? What do you think?
