Overview

ScribeAmerica is a healthcare company founded in 2003 with the intention of employing and training medical scribes to work at hospitals and top medical practices across the country. The company’s objective is to provide partners with new, creative, and smart solutions that will enhance health outcomes (ScribeAmerica Official Website, 2023). By giving students the opportunity to gain direct first-hand experience in a healthcare setting, ScribeAmerica plays a crucial role in the community. I chose to intern for this organization because I find their organizational values to be important and relevant to both my educational and career goals. My role at ScribeAmerica was an Emergency Medicine Tele scribe and I was employed at MedStar Health Urgent Care. In this position, I worked side by side with physicians as they saw patients and was responsible for documenting the provider-patient interaction into the electronic medical record.

Impact of the organization

Health professionals must be equipped to overcome significant issues, problems, and practices that face today’s health care system (National Institutes of Health, 2021). For instance, the organization faces numerous issues related to physician shortages, inefficiency, and the necessity for quickly evolving processes. For instance, the current healthcare environment necessitates adaptable systems that can accommodate patient flow in healthcare facilities (Wolters Kluwer, 2022). Scribes can be used to assess the issue and offer support because compliance-related tasks like clinical documentation and managing electronic medical records restrict a doctor’s ability to deliver extra medical attention.

ScribeAmerica impacts the global community in numerous ways by specializing in emergency medicine, hospital care, outpatient care, Telehealth, Post-Acute services, Veterinary Medicine, Population Health, Care Coordination, and a variety of other areas. This company focuses on providing efficient medical documentation and care team optimization services to leading healthcare systems and practices across the country. A practice that is most important and relevant to this organization is the implementation of telehealth care technology. According to the journal of American Medical Informatics Association, “As we continue this shift to telemedicine, new issues and risks unravel that need to be addressed, particularly in regard to information security and privacy, and ongoing work is needed to ensure that our technology infrastructure provides an environment for safe and effective care delivery” (Jalali, Landman, & Gordon, 2020). Raising patient knowledge of the availability of virtual treatment, setting up user-friendly EHR systems with telehealth capabilities, and assisting patients in becoming familiar with telehealth systems are all necessary to further combat these issues (National Library of Medicine, 2022).

As a tele scribe, it was my duty to provide real-time, remote documentation support for providers at Medstar Health urgent care locations in Virginia and Maryland. Not only do tele scribes deliver innovative, engaged, and domestic support but the improved accessibility to healthcare makes it easier for physicians to help patients manage their conditions as well. Wait times will be decreased with the aid of the scribe program, which is also a prevalent issue within the healthcare sector. Medical professionals can deliver precise care thanks to Scribe America’s services, which also offer unmatched support for the care team. Since medical scribes update the EMR in real-time and keep track of patients’ urgent requirements, doctors can devote more of their time to providing high-quality patient care rather than spending as much time charting on the computer screen. Due to Scribe America, the widespread adoption of these services has given a new approach to the delivery of healthcare, while also improving the staffing shortages across the country. Technology improvements in telehealth care are useful to society as a whole because they replace the conventional method of providing healthcare services by enabling a more practical, effective, and all-around superior evaluation of medicine. This internship has allowed me to implement efficient scribing services to providers via virtual systems, while also ensuring that I meet the HIPAA rules and regulations that help ensure patient privacy and confidentiality. This not only helps the provider, but it improves the outcomes of patient care.

Recommendations

In terms of management and communication, the organization’s professional or operational component can be improved. It was challenging to contact my supervisor in a timely manner because the majority of the internship and communication with my supervisor was conducted electronically or via email. In any business, but particularly in the healthcare industry, effective communication is crucial. That said, communication breakdowns can have a detrimental impact on patient outcomes and the ramifications of poor communication in the healthcare industry can be significant. I think that although this internship opportunity was remote, it is crucial for this company to adopt strategies to improve communication between staff and for communicating information to patients. In conclusion, the relationship between students and supervisors will be strengthened as a result of management’s improved communication, and future interns will feel more at ease asking questions and getting answers to their concerns quickly. This will enhance the internship experience for future students who choose to intern with this company as well as for those who are currently in the co-working area.

References

Mohammad S Jalali, Adam Landman, William J Gordon. “Telemedicine, privacy, & information Security in the age of COVID-19”. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, Volume 28, Issue 3, Pages 671–672. Published December 16th, 2020. Accessed on April 16th, 2023. Retrieved from, https://academic.oup.com/jamia/article/28/3/671/6039104?login=false

EHR Systems Articles. “Major Challenges Facing the Healthcare Industry Today.” PrognoCIS by Bizmatics. Published May 24th, 2022. Accessed on April 16th, 2023. Retrieved from, https://prognocis.com/challenges-in-healthcare-industry/

“Challenges Facing the Health System and Implications for Educational Reform.” National Library of Medicine; National Center for Biotechnology Information. Accessed on April 16th, 2023. Retrieved from, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK221522/

Natalie Laub, MD, Anish K. Agarwal, MD, Catherine Shi, BA, Arianna Sjamsu, BA, and Krisda Chaiyachati, MD. “Delivering Urgent Care Using Telemedicine: Insights from Experienced Clinicians at Academic Medical Centers”. National Library of Medicine; Journal of General Internal Medicine. Published December 17th, 2021, 37(4): 707–713. Retrieved from, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8680069/

Deborah Woodcock, MS, MBA & Robby Bergstrom. “Medical Scribes and Patient Safety” Patient Safety Network. Published August 1, 2019. Accessed on April 16th, 2023. Retrieved from, https://psnet.ahrq.gov/perspective/medical-scribes-and-patient-safety

Wolter Kluwer. “Six challenges to delivering quality healthcare.” Experts’ insights. Published September 6th, 2022. Accessed on April 16th, 2023. Retrieved from, https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/six-challenges-to-delivering-quality-healthcare