The biggest complaint in our Liver clinics & I'm sure for all the medical center doctor/patient interaction, is patient wait time. Some times they are waiting up to 2 hrs or more for a 15 minute appointment which they have spent 3 hrs driving to from out of town. I read about Medical Scribes online & thought it was a fabulous idea, which may or may not have been broached before here at UCSF, though I have never seen such a job posted.

Per Wikipedia: A Medical/Clinical Scribe etc-- is a trained medical information mgr who specializes in charting physician-patient encounters in real-time during medical exams. A medical scribe can work onsite at a hospital or clinic, or from a remote, HIPAA-secure facility. Primary duties: follow a physician through his or her work day and chart patient encounters in real-time using a medical office's Electronic Health Record and existing templates. Medical scribes also generate referral letters for physicians, manage and sort medical documents within the EHR system, and assist with e-prescribing. Medical scribes can be thought of as data care managers, enabling physicians, medical assistants, and nurses to focus on patient in-take and care during clinic hours. Medical scribes, by handling data management tasks for physicians in real-time, free the physician to increase patient contact time, give more thought to complex cases, better manage patient flow through the department, and increase productivity to see more patients. The Joint Commission's guidance by explaining that "a scribe can be found in multiple settings including physician practices, hospitals, emergency departments, long-term care facilities, long-term acute care hospitals, public health clinics, and ambulatory care centers. They can be employed by a healthcare organization, physician, licensed independent practitioner, or work as a contracted service. An increasing body of research has shown the use of medical scribes is associated with improved overall physician productivity, cost- & time-savings, and patient satisfaction.