As a doctor, physician, or another medical provider, you are of course taking copious notes during each appointment with a patient. This information will likely be stored in the patient's records and you also use this information when coding the diagnosis or service provided for the insurance companies. But documenting, coding, and storing all of this data can take up a lot of time. Many doctors are choosing to use some outside help in the form of a remote Electronic Medical Record (EMR) scribe. Here's how hiring a remote or virtual medical scribe can benefit your business and your patients.
Make Sure Every Patient's Notes Include Every Last Detail
As a doctor or medical provider, you need to listen carefully to your patients and remain engaged throughout the appointment. If you seem distracted and more focused on note-taking than actually conversing with your patient, you might come off in a less-than-ideal light to the patient. But if you stay laser focused on speaking to the patient, you might not be able to take as detailed notes as well as you would like. A remote EMR or virtual EMR scribe may be able to video conference into the appointment with a patient's permission and take detailed notes so that you can focus on actually speaking to and treating the patient.
Get Help Creating Charts and Other Visual Aids You Don't Have Time For
Even if you are good at multitasking and capable of taking down notes during your appointment, you might not have much time to polish up what you wrote down before moving on to your next appointment. A remote medical scribe can take your notes from each appointment and turn them into a much more professional-looking sheet of information. Some scribes may even be able to turn test results or other information you jot down into more complex or professional-looking graphs or charts. This can help the patient better understand what's in their medical file and may also help the patient get coverage from their insurer by providing a more complete picture of the situation.
Ensure Everything Is Coded Properly the First Time to Ensure Happy Insurance Companies and Happy Patients
Your notes are eventually going to need to be coded into a system in order to send the patient's record to the insurance company to make sure that the patient gets billed properly and that you get your payment for the services rendered. A medical scribe can assist with making sense of your notes and jotting down the correct billing or medical codes for each service, in order to make the transition into billing as smooth as possible for everyone involved.
Consider hiring a remote EMR scribe for your doctor's office.