Medical scribes: How do their notes stack up?
Their outpatient notes stack up well, according to this small, retrospective review. Scribes’ notes were rated slightly higher in overall quality than physicians’ notes—at least for certain patient encounters.
The ratings on the PDQI-9 may be subjective, and the reviewers were not blinded to whether a scribe was used to write the note. The differences in PDQI-9 scores were small. Although statistically significant, they may not significantly affect clinical practice. Our care model is unique in that scribes are active members of the clinical care team; the higher quality of scribed notes we found may not apply to professional scribes who are not part of the team.
Future research directions. In our study, medical assistants acting as scribes composed progress notes of similar or higher quality than physicians who wrote notes alone, although all notes were of generally average quality. As the use of scribes in medicine expands, additional studies should examine the impact of scribes on primary care workflow, quality and cost of care delivered, and quality of physician experience.
CORRESPONDENCE
Anita D. Misra-Hebert, MD, MPH, Center for Value-Based Care Research, Medicine Institute, 9500 Euclid Avenue, G10, Cleveland, OH 44195; misraa@ccf.org.
