The Future of Healthcare Documentation with Medical Scribes

With more medical breakthroughs coupled with more people living longer, it’s all the more critical that documentation keeps pace with increased expectations for patient care outcomes. Long gone are the days of the infamous illegible doctor’s scribbles and bulky files serving as the main repositories for every individual’s life in medical memos. At the same time, more and more people are opting for the convenience of telehealth for an increasing myriad of reasons that are continuing to necessitate more digital tools that are accessible for patients and support best practices for medical professionals.

Because of this, it’s important to note some of the most pressing issues related to the future of healthcare documentation, especially the role of virtual medical scribes.

Improved Patient Outcomes

Increasing medical documentation is critical for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, more documentation is simply the right thing to do for the patient, especially when that individual is in a particularly medically complex circumstance in which it can be hard to diagnose a chronic and/or rare illness or other condition.

The more documentation is available - and especially that which can be easily searched through supportive search functions and generated algorithms - the more likely a medical team can more quickly and accurately pinpoint the issue and create a solution that is most likely going to be responsive to the patient’s individual needs.

Knowledge is power, and while more information leads to that knowledge, it can be cumbersome using traditional methods, including the formerly tried-and-true doctor’s notepad. The future of healthcare documentation is increasingly reliant on meeting the doctors’ and nurses’ professional needs as well, with more options for text-to-speech, both in the office and during telehealth visits, and for outsourcing the role of documentation to trained medical scribes who are ready to assist their team in capturing the data. All of these services best ensure that the rest of the workforce can more directly focus on directly working with the patient and their personalized care plans.

Convenience for All

Similarly, the future of medical documentation’s move towards digital record keeping is being rolled out with convenience in mind. This is particularly true when we consider user-friendly apps for telehealth, including by providing easily accessible records that can empower patients with a few touches on a screen or clicks of a button, from asking their care provider a question, to accessing medical charts, to sending their information to another medical specialist.

In particular, therefore, the future of healthcare documentation is being rolled out with more intentionality behind mobility. In an era where area codes tell more of a story than denote a person’s whereabouts, the ability for patients and professionals alike to send and store encrypted data in the cloud is a huge time-saver, with added bonuses that virtual methods of capturing and sending medical information also reduces the risk of accidentally misplacing or sending the wrong file, or even destroying medical records prematurely due to either an accident or a prolonged lapse in a patient’s visits.

ever-larger amounts of data, but it will also help to protect against medical malpractice as individuals who fill these specific roles are also entrusted more directly with the task of accurately retaining such records for posterity. This increased oversight is a net benefit that can lead to both convenience at the time of patient care, as well as to protect against any damaging audits or other malpractice concerns.

Data Privacy and Security

With mobility and convenience comes an increased need for secure data protection. Electronic Health Records, or EHRs, are constantly developing to address the shared interest in efficiency, a quality end-user experience, and accuracy alongside the overarching demand for top-notch cybersecurity.

It is no surprise to any that cyber criminals and other bad faith actors are continuing to get savvier in their pursuit of sensitive information, whether to actively cause harm or to profit off vulnerable people and institutions by selling information on the dark web.

With the rise of medical scribes and more digital healthcare documentation also comes a rise in training for HIPAA best practices from the intimate conversation in the doctor’s office to what is stored on a server. Investing in training, and additional medical IT professionals is an additional investment in new technologies that keep pace with new realities as well as new discoveries and treatments.

Conclusion

Just like any advancement in medicine, persistent dedication along with innovation is what makes the once impossible become a routine standard of care. The same can be said for how we as a society continue to embrace a future that relies on increased specialization in our fields, along with an increase in the delegation of more tasks to the digital arena. By empowering medical scribes to be at the forefront of medical documentation, we are empowering the rest of the medical community to focus more on the special relationship between patients and their healthcare providers, and through this relationship, more empowered patients.