Legislation co-authored by U.S. Reps. Greg Walden (R-OR) and Phil Roe (R-TN) to create a pilot program aimed at improving care at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) facilities by using medical scribes, or physician’s assistants, passed the House on Monday.
A two-year pilot program would test the use of medical scribes at 10 VA facilities under the Veterans Affairs Medical Scribe Pilot Act of 2017, H.R. 1848. Congress would receive reports every 180 days on how medical scribes have impacted patient outcomes, provider satisfaction, wait times and the number of patients physicians can see.
“This legislation sets up a pilot program to try something that has worked successfully in the private sector: having scribes work side-by-side with doctors, so that doctors can focus on the patient and scribes can focus on the paperwork,” Walden, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said.
Medical scribes aid physicians with administrative tasks like paperwork and entering patient data into electronic health record systems. Use of medical scribes in the private sector has bolstered per-hour physician productivity by as much as 59 percent, studies show.
Roe, the chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee and a medical doctor, said medical scribes are being increasingly used in the private sector to help physicians focus squarely on patients.
“Like many doctors I hear from today, I found the increasing amount of time that I was spending attending to electronic health record requirements, necessary as they may be, detracted from the quality of my patients’ interactions and significantly slowed down how smoothly my clinic day would operate,” Roe said in remarks on the House floor in support of the measure.
“I believe the same is true at VA. Many doctors now… are spending over half their time entering information, just basically being data entry people,” he added.
Roe said he and his staff have consistently asked during visits to VA medical facilities what can be done to provide safer and better care and to help doctors see more patients. “By far, one of the most common responses that we hear is a plea to ‘give us scribes; give us some help,’” Roe said.
The measure also includes provisions of H.R. 1662, a bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), the chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Health, to ban smoking at VA medical facilities.