Medical Scribe Program Receives $500k Grant

A novel program at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix has received a two-year, $500,000 grant from the Del E. Webb Foundation to improve care and efficiency in the primary care setting through training medical scribes.

The Primary Care Medical Scribe Program began as a joint partnership between the college’s Departments of Medicine and Family, Community and Preventive Medicine to better the quality of physician-patient interactions and combat the amount of time physicians spend on administrative tasks.

“If you ask physicians about electronic health records (EHR), many have a visceral and often negative response,” Jacob Anderson, DO, said. “This is because, unfortunately for many, the EHR and its administrative requirements represent a barrier from being able to connect and interact with the patient sitting in front of you.”

Dr. Anderson, an assistant professor in the Department of Family, Community and Preventive Medicine, and Emily Mallin, MD, an associate professor and director of education for the Department of Medicine, are co-investigators for the grant. They started the project in the fall of 2017 under the leadership and support of department chairs Jeff Wolfrey, MD, chair of Family, Community and Preventive Medicine, and Michael Fallon, MD, chair of Medicine.

“We are hoping to improve efficiency in order to focus on therapeutic relationships with patients,” Dr. Mallin said.

Family medicine physicians are spending as much as 20 percent of their time after-hours, from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m., on administrative tasks. Additionally, residents are spending between 60 to 90 minutes per patient on administrative tasks for 20 to 40 minutes patient visits. This has led to a lack of connection in the doctor-patient relationship and contributes to physician burnout.

Scribes will have the ability to assist with charting, recording laboratory and radiology results, as well as supporting physician workflow with EHR data entry. Scribes have long been used to assist in the emergency medicine, urology and cardiology care settings, but they have not been incorporated in a significant way in the primary care setting.

“This generous grant builds on the College’s commitment of community engagement and allows us the opportunity to fundamentally change how we introduce and prepare our diverse population of young adults for careers in medicine,” Dr. Fallon said. “At the same time, the program provides participants with a window into the challenges and excitement of primary care medicine in Arizona.”

While this project’s primary purpose is to improve the quality of physician-patient interactions, it will also have the important secondary benefit of creating a unique opportunity for those wanting to pursue a medical career. Working as a scribe will provide invaluable direct experience interfacing with physicians and learning about the primary care setting, which could influence the scribe’s future career path.

“This program could potentially address the critical shortage of primary care physicians in two interrelated ways,” Dr. Wolfrey said. “Not only will scribes get early exposure to primary care settings, but their involvement in the care process will likely improve the workflow and job satisfaction of primary care physicians, thus mitigating the potential for burnout.”

Another component to the program will be the opportunity for medical students to serve as mentors with the scribes. The leap from pre-medical to attending is pretty big, so having the medical students there will help guide these scribes into the medical field.

“Students maintain that passion and first exposure into the clinical world where they learned the language of medicine — that terminology — and where they saw patients interact with their physicians; it’s a powerful stimulus,” Dr. Mallin said. “We all remember how we figured out where we belonged in medicine. It is our hypothesis that providing a positive initial experience into medicine might help drive those scribes into primary care fields.”

The group would like to express their gratitude to the Del E. Webb Foundation for the generous grant and support of the Primary Care Medical Scribe Program.