Medical scribes may provide a way to increase physician productivity and workflow efficiency while reducing physician documentation time. There is no prior literature to our knowledge on the influence of medical scribes on outpatient paediatric gastroenterology clinic operations. The major goal of this research was to fill this information gap. During a summer scribe programme, data were gathered on contacts done by paediatric gastrointestinal physicians at a tertiary facility. Scribes were not randomised in their training and attendance at clinics. Patient flow, as recorded by the electronic medical record system, was used to measure clinic efficiency. The complexity codes for medical notes, related work relative value units (wRVUs), and note delinquency were compared across visits with and without scribes. A total of 1,970 encounters were included. Medical note complexity (including wRVUs), note delinquency, patient satisfaction, and perceived overall quality of care were comparable across groups. With scribes, clinic time for established encounters was statistically reduced by 14%. There was no discernible difference in first encounter clinic time. For fresh interactions with scribes, the time to note completion was shorter. When a scribe was present on the third day after the incident, further notes were completed.
The presence of medical scribes was linked with considerably more efficient clinic flow for established encounters and marginally higher note completion rates. There were no discernible detrimental impacts on the complexity of documented medical notes or patient satisfaction scores.