Virtual medical scribes: making electronic medical records work for you.

There is increasing buzz around the term "medical scribe" in healthcare today. Medical scribes help meet the growing electronic medical record (EMR) data entry challenge healthcare providers face. Medical scribes reduce providers' paperwork burden, increase a medical practice's net margins, and reduce stress levels for doctors and their staff. They do this by charting patient encounters in real-time during patient examinations, thus reducing significantly the data entry workload that EMRs place on providers. Medical scribes can work onsite or offsite from a HIPAA-secure location, the latter being known as "virtual medical scribes." This article explores the uses and benefits of scribes to give you the background to employ them effectively in your clinic or hospital.