Medical scribes may help a bit but will not fix the EHR mare's nest

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Some developments have appeared on freeing the physicians from a bit  hegemony of the computer mandates . Back in the old days physicians would often see a patient and  do an exam and then dictate a note, in other words they used a scribe. Enter the computers and the reason for scribes was somehow forgotten and it was thought to be appropriate for physicians to transcribe their own notes  using the computer keyboard.

 The reason for scribes to begin with is explained by the economics 101 notion of opportunity cost. Simply put, the physician's time was worth more seeing the next patient than typing. This would be true even in the unusual case in which  the doc was a better typist that the scribes he uses.The opportunity cost of a physician doing her own typing is too high. Now it looks like the scribes are coming back. My eye doctor has been doing that for years. See here for details on the new scribe resurgence. Of course, this fix  does not alleviate the problem of "meaningful use".Scribes may decrease the amount of time wasted by physicians but the issue of the  mandated or quasi-mandated use of computers not  designed to facilitate physicians' work  is not fixed by this.