Do doctors need EHR 'scribes'?

Is the electronic health record falling short of its promise and contributing to physician burnout because it saddles doctors with ever-increasing administrative tasks? Yes, thinks Dr. Michael Murphy, an ER physician who co founded ScribeAmerica a decade ago. "Physicians feel taken away from patients and families," Murphy told InformationWeek in a phone interview. "They're spending three hours a night filling out [the EHR]." Physicians today spend, on average, eight to 12 minutes per patient filling out the EHR, according to a number of studies.