As more and more healthcare practices in the US move to electronic health records, the number of medical scribes - workers who log the details of doctor-patient interactions on a computer - is increasing. Scribes are not licensed, though about one third are voluntarily certified. Companies that employ scribes require at minimum a high school diploma, and some prefer pre-med students and offer one to two weeks of training. Under federal law, unlicensed workers such as scribes are not allowed to enter orders for prescriptions or X-rays. Concerns have been raised that there is no enforcement mechanism to ensure compliance with the law and that scribes could be pressured by doctors to make entries and orders beyond their training.
December 15, 2015
