More and more we're hearing from clients that want to train staff to do the newest thing in the medical scribe world: work remotely. We've heard stories of undergraduate students, medical assistants, and nurses all starting to do this newfangled role. Whereas an in-person scribe follows a provider around, crafting notes based on what they see and hear, remote medical scribes view the encounter through a camera (or sometimes just a microphone) placed in the patient's room. Now, the first thing I thought was, is this legal? Yes, it can be. Any internet providing service to a healthcare facility has to be healthcare compliant, meaning it's encrypted to protected patient data. So the internet that the device is using to stream is ok to use. But then patients need to agree to be recorded as well so that this doesn't infringe on their privacy (you cannot record patient interactions without consent). There are some distinct advantages and disadvantages to this system. One advantage is that the patient may feel more comfortable having only one person other than themselves in the room (the provider!). One disadvantage, is that this can be expensive. Mounted cameras with good microphones and streaming capabilities can be a couple thousand dollars a piece, so the usual provider has 2-3 dedicated rooms, so that's 5,000-10,000 dollars to install the cameras. And then the internet server may need to be upgraded to account for the extra bandwidth being used, which is another several thousand dollars. But maybe, this new system will allow them to save money to make up for these costs. Not all patient encounters are equally difficult to document. Pediatric well child checks and routine physicals in healthy patients can be largely written from a template in most clinics. Maybe remote scribes allow a provider to only pay for services (for a particular patient) when they feel they need it...? In any case, the future is coming, and MSTS is here to help any organization that may be interested in training staff to write medical notes remotely.
Comments are closed.
|
Archives
December 2019
Categories |