The 2024 Veterinary Meeting and Expo in Orlando was once again an outstanding gathering of the veterinary community. Doctors, techs, practice managers, and vendors gathered to connect, learn, and explore solutions to the industry’s biggest hurdles.
Four days of conversation with talented and invested vet industry professionals yielded some valuable takeaways:
Record-writing isn’t why you become a Veterinarian
No child has ever dreamt of becoming a vet because they are passionate about accurate and complete documentation. While a well-put-together record is critical for doctors and clients alike, it is the burden of managing the documentation can drain the joy out of your practice. Studies show vets are spending 2-4 hours a day on documentation alone, either at the expense of seeing more patients or their personal lives.
The growing issue of burnout and low morale among veterinary professionals has prompted leaders of hospitals and practices of all sizes to scramble for an answer. doctors have high standards for their records and have templates and preferences. How do we bridge the gap in workforce and bandwidth while still maintaining the highest quality of care for pets?
Veterinary scribes could be the answer. The addition of scribes has been a hugely successful practice in human medicine for decades. Be it in person, virtually, or in the form of advanced AI technology, help from someone trained in completing records removes considerable strain from doctors and allows them to get back to doing the work that brings them joy.
Happy staff, happy hospital
The first place leaders turn when looking to problem solve is their existing resources. Many veterinary practices have attempted to redistribute workloads across existing staff, counting on vet techs and other support staff to tackle documentation.
Redistribution can be a good, quick fix. Vet techs are passionate, knowledgeable, and well-trained. They know each patient well and perform many of the services reflected in pet records. But their value is the services they already perform. By saddling existing staff with work they aren’t trained for, and increasing their workload, you risk exacerbating staffing and morale issues. By moving the work of record keeping to other team members, you’re also reassigning the related burnout. The last few years have shown a staff with high morale and adequate resources will deliver your hospital sustainable results that will make both the ledger and the patients happy.
“Don’t worry, AI will solve it!”
The recent rise of artificial intelligence has left every industry asking “What can AI do for us?” Veterinarians are no exception. The most obvious place for AI-driven tools is assisting with the massive administrative burdens facing practice managers, doctors, and techs. But technology that isn’t rooted in real scribe practices can deliver sub-par results. Google and Siri don’t always understand what you need, how can you trust an AI solution to help with your most important data?
For DVMs, the reception to many of these AI or talk-to-text applications has been mixed. AI can relieve some of the immediate strain of documenting a patient visit in the room, but the burden on the doctor isn’t eliminated. Rather than spending time creating the note they are heavily editing the note that their app has created. What most AI solutions are missing is the support of a well-trained, knowledgeable scribe business.
The issues that generative AI apps pose when considering accuracy, consistency, and completion are easily mitigated by having trained vet scribes perform edits for doctors, delivering a more polished record right away. Solutions that backstop the performance of AI with trained vet scribes can deliver instant value to a hospital concerning doctor burnout, staff morale, and the financial implications of more accurate records and charge capture.
Think adding veterinary scribes to your hospital or practice might be worth a look? Let ScribeAmerica help you build a program that meets your unique needs, from in-person vet scribes to virtual scribes, to the AI-enabled scribes on their Speke platform. No matter your situation, ScribeAmerica can help you realize the potential of your hospital today.
Learn more about ScribeAmerica vet scribes here.
