Healthcare Tech Innovations Create New Profession

Healthcare Tech Innovations Create New Profession

Here’s a new acronym to add to the already alphabet souped up field of CSR and sustainability: EMR, electronic medical records. The American Recovery and Reinvestments Act of 2009 gave health care providers five years to demonstrate “meaningful” use of EMR in order to maintain their Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement levels. The resulting explosive growth in tech innovation for the healthcare industry has resulted in an entirely new profession: medical scribe.

Scribes enter data from doctors’ comments in real time, during examinations, allowing physicians to concentrate on face-to-face time with patients. Doctors who use scribes report much higher satisfaction by focusing on patients rather than a laptop screen. There’s a plus at the bottom line, too.

A recent study shows that cardiologists who used scribes saw 9.6 percent more patients per hour. That translated into $1.4 million in extra revenue for each cardiologist annually. I’m John Howell for 3BL Media.