Medical Scribes as an Input in Health-Care Production: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment

Medical scribes are charting specialists who prepare patient charts in the physician's stead, creating efficiency gains in production via specialization of labor. The scribe industry has grown rapidly in recent years, but relatively little is known about its impact on health-care production. I use data from a randomized experiment in which scribes were assigned to some, but not all, physician shifts in three emergency rooms over nine months. Generally, I find that scribes significantly decrease physician overtime usage, increase the number of relative value units per shift, and decrease patient wait times. The size of the benefits of scribes varies considerably based on the types of shifts worked and characteristics of the physician matched with the scribe.