Hybrid Medical Scribing Model - The Best of Both Worlds

July 21, 2022

Hybrid Medical Scribing – The Best of Both Worlds

The clerical burden associated with EHR usage is attributed as the number one cause of physician burnout. We also know that physicians spend twice as much time on EHRs and other clerical tasks compared to the time providing patient care. There exists a technology by the name speech-to-text software that could be used to address these issues by automating clinical documentation tasks. Using the latest speech-to-text voice recognition technology allows you to type with your voice and not with your hands in order to generate clinical documentation instantly, thus improving clinical workflow and efficiency. This speech-to-text technology is good enough, but not perfect. Meaning it lacks the accuracy of humans. But it is superfast and economical. In this hybrid medical scribing model, AI and specially trained medical scribes can work together to create the fastest and most efficient workflow.

What is this hybrid medical scribing model all about?

We have all heard about speech to text software, a tool that leverages the technology of speech recognition to convert spoken words into written text, in real-time. ASR, the most rapidly advancing technology is helping physicians save time and improve productivity by taking over some of the time-consuming and labor-intensive clinical documentation tasks. This is how it works. All you have to do is send in audios – such as physician-patient interactions or medical dictations. For this purpose, you can use Scribe4Me mobile app to capture the conversation that happens between the physician and the patient during an appointment, in real-time or dictate notes after the patient visit is over. The ASR system will transform the audios into clinical narratives. But, the output produced may not be accurate. To overcome this, medical scribes step into the picture. The machine-generated output is proofread and edited by a medical scribe in order to convert it into comprehensive and accurate medical notes before returning it to the physician. This is done typically by the end of the day or the next day.

Enhancing ASR with scribe intervention

While ASR is cheaper and faster the text output created by ASR is not accurate. This may be due to various factors like input audio quality, heavy accents, dialects, multiple speakers, background noise, and much more. ASR falls short of its ability to precisely recreate or provide contextual meaning in conversations that involve complex or multi-party clinical environments. So how do we get the ASR to be accurate? ASR and medical scribes should work hand-in-hand to produce accurate charts that are unbeatable in terms of speed, price, and quality. Wondering how? Well, the ASR-generated notes will be cleaned up by the medical scribes to provide accurate, complete and detailed patient charts. This is how it works. The process involves the following – speech-to-text conversion, scribe editing, and quality review to provide perfect charting.

The benefits of pairing ASR with medical scribes

ASR when combined with medical scribes can help unlock the benefits of both. It includes the following.

Help save up to 3 hours a day on clinical documentation and other administrative tasks, while boosting productivity by 20%.
A significant 40% improvement in the work-life balance of physicians.
Physicians have more time to indulge in a free-flowing conversation with their patients, which ultimately improves patient satisfaction.
As ASR takes over the documentation part, medical scribes have time to assume additional tasks like placing orders for laboratory tests, medications, etc., or even help with any chart backlogs. They also update the medical information of the patient in the EHR and notify the physician of it. So once the physician enters the exam room, they spend less time reviewing the patient information in the EHR and get straight to the issue. All of these can help improve the efficiency of each patient visit.
With ASR taking over the cumbersome and time-consuming documentation tasks, considerably reduces physician burnout.

Verdict

The AI-powered speech-to-text technology has been widely used in healthcare organizations across the country. But it can in no way replace or take over human intelligence. As per a study conducted by JAMA Network in the year 2018, unedited clinical documents created using speech-to-text contains clinically significant errors. This simply means that human intervention is crucial in rendering it error-free. Hence, by using the hybrid medical scribing model that combines the best of both worlds – speech-to-text with quality audits by medical scribes you enjoy the benefits of both – speed and accuracy.