"I almost didn't believe it when I heard that I got to follow a doctor and go into every room," said Fera, a 21-year-old Gloucester County native who works as a scribe in the emergency departments in Virtua hospitals in Voorhees and Marlton.
"You get exposed to things that you otherwise would never be exposed to."
Scribes started working in fast-paced emergency departments in the mid-1990s, but hiring has picked up as more hospitals have switched to electronic records, say officials at several companies that hire and train scribes. Having scribes do most of the data entry allows the highest-paid people in the room to focus on patients and see more of them and ensure that information used in billing is complete, the companies say. It also allows doctors to make more eye contact with patients, and that makes patients happier.
"It's created a cottage industry," said James Bonner, medical director of the department of emergency medicine at Underwood-Memorial Hospital in Woodbury.
The 15 doctors in his practice started hiring scribes in 2007. They now have five. "It's an emerging phenomenon," Bonner said.
At Virtua Marlton, emergency physician Ken Sprankle said the doctors worked with about 10 scribes. He said that he could probably see as many patients without them, but that their help "makes our days more enjoyable. . . . It does make the charts more complete."
Virtua and Underwood refused to let a reporter watch scribes at work, citing patient privacy.
