medical scribe

director of business development

account manager

senior account manager

patient transporter

Scribe America

I have been working as a scribe in the ED of one of the largest hospital's in Florida for a little over 2 years now. Only until about a year into the job did I start to enjoy it and feel comfortable. There is an absolutely mountain of a learning curve for new-hires once in the department and even after training; you will never not learn anything on any given shift. Going off of that, after being hired there is an online training course before you even get to step foot into a hospital 2 months after getting the job. On top of the learning curve, there is not much support to make you believe you are any good at the job; during training you are mostly told your mistakes in order to correct them and even when working alone the provider will almost never give you a "good job". Because of these factors it took me a long time to realize that I was good at this job and the providers knew that as well. Yes, the pay is not great at all for what we are required to do and the volume/speed at which we have to get the charting completed, but the experience for any pre-professional student is second to none. My knowledge on anatomy, physiology, medications, treatment plans/options, and so on has grown immensely since starting this job; I work with providers now that fully believe they could assign me a patient and I could do the complete workup on my own. Now, this should be taken with a huge grain of salt because I actively ask questions and seek to learn anything I can from these providers, I work with other scribes that are much more introverted and may not have the same clinical knowledge secondary to not asking questions and such. My biggest gripe with the company itself is the uncertainty of employment we all at my hospital faced during the COVID pandemic. We were told at the beginning of 2020 that they were going to reduce scribe coverage to 50% in April, but that thankfully did not happen. A few months later at the end of July, they announced they would be getting rid of ALL scribes toward the end of August, with only a 3 week notice. I was one of the lucky few that the providers chose to keep on the team after the fact in order to help them out, but the entire situation was stressful. Aside from your on-site chief scribe, there is essentially no "management" you will ever see. Like I said, I have been working with the company for over 2 years now and never once seen anyone in management above the chief scribe, so you are more of less just a name/number to those working above you. Along with management, aside from being chief scribe there is no room to "move up" the ladder without moving to a totally different site and taking on the task of starting a new program there. I have received multiple opportunities via email, but they all require me to essentially move to a different part of the state in order to take on the new position. After gaining some experience you may have the option to be an Ambassador (i.e - trainer), which comes with a $1/hr raise on training shifts, which comes out to either less than or equal to literally only 1 extra hour of work due to the low wages; aside from a "resume-builder" the position does not compensate you for all the extra work you will have to do training WHILE completing your own charts. Overall, like most of the other reviews on this site, I would NOT recommend this job to anyone not looking to move onto some form of pre-professional school. You will work 10-12 hour shifts, sometimes with no true break, for as little pay as legally allowed (minimum wage). There is a high turnover rate and due to the nature of the job, you will not really get to know any of your co-workers to create that "family" feel. 

The job is simple, you go to the ER you've been assigned to work and follow the ER doc you're assigned to and do their charts based on their preferences and specifications. Sometimes you may need to do other duties but general patient care is off limits. If anything it's more of a job where you're on the computer the whole shift on the Hospital's system. (We used Epic at my location.) While you're given training for the position I would say it's rather inadequate of teaching or preparing someone for the scope and scale of working at the emergency room of a hospital or even just a free-standing independent ER. The job of a 'Scribe' is labeled as entry-level but in reality it's anything but an entry level position. You will need quite a bit of medical knowledge beforehand so that you're not stuck asking "What does that mean?" or "Can you explain what that is?" Furthermore, you'll need good attention to detail and be able to work quickly. The ER is often very fast paced and stressful. If you're not careful you can fall behind and it'll be so much worse if you didn't catch the doctor-patient interaction. It can certainly be overwhelming. The work environment can become stressful shockingly quickly especially since it'll be your job to listen to the problems of patients. All the while, you'll also have to subject yourself to having to constantly listen to groans, crying, and screaming (the children are the worst), and also just seeing gnarly or disgusting stuff pretty much almost every shift. You'll need pretty good mental fortitude not break down yourself. And none of this is really explained or showed in great detail during training. This in turn leads to the job having a high turnover rate. People simply can't handle the stress and fast pace of the Emergency department. All the while you're lead into a false sense of security by the job being labeled 'entry level'. This is made even worse by the abysmal payout given for having to endure all this stress. It's not even worth staying long term as the path for promotion up the chain leadership is very limited and the additional benefits you get are laughable. You basically end up with more work and responsibility for marginally better pay. (Typically Less than $3) And quite simply, it isn't worth it. Also don't got asking for a raise... It's never going to happen unless you get promoted to a new position.

Take this job as a last resort or if you're really looking to go into medicine.

I should also note that this occupation may not be around forever as AI has been being developed which basically does the scribe job. Many doctors I know have opted out because of these advancements to AI.

This is without a doubt one of the coolest job I've had on my road to becoming a healthcare provider. There are several positives, which carry a big weight, but a few problems that I personally feel outweigh the positives...and here is why. 

This is a great job for those who are wanting to learn how Docs and Midlevels do their jobs, for those curious who want to do them. You are expected to learn an INSANE amount of information pertaining to medicine, and you will. There's no doubt about it. This job will look good on Med School/Nursing School/PA School applications, and especially since you will gain so much experience in a critical care setting. 

I feel like management really depends on where you are located, but I was very fortunate to have a great management system with seasoned scribes who worked very hard to be the best bosses they could be. So I am thankful for them. 

But here are the 2 things that drove me away. The first thing is PAY. For a little while, scribes got paid decently and above minimum wage. But with my states increase in minimum wages, scribes were really affected in the end. Working there for 2 years, I topped out at 10.05 an hour. Which is pathetic, considering the workload, medical knowledge you learn, and CONSTANT attention to your patients and their pending studies, labs, imaging, trauma, etc. Not to mention keeping the physician on their feet to prevent them from becoming confused or disoriented with their workload. Overall, you get paid VERY low wages for all of the work you do. You are an asset, and the physician's right-hand (wo)man. They rely on you. You should get paid more than 10 dollars an hour for that. 

The second thing is the benefits, or a lack thereof. To my knowledge, only fulltime scribes get benefits, and they are very minimal. I'm unaware as to what they are, but I know it isn't anything to be happy about. Scribes do not even get the chance to earn PTO or ESB (sick leave). Even implementing those 2 things would help incredibly with this job, but it will not come. ScribeAmerica is a cheap company...like VERY cheap company. They don't care about the scribes, but they care about the contracts they maintain with major hospitals. 

Overall, this job is incredible and opens your eyes to SOOO many things. You will see death, tragedy, happiness, miracles (Maybe. I was fortunate to see a couple), and so many other things I can't even describe. I recommend this job to someone who is a college student living either on campus, at home with parents, or somewhere with almost no financial responsibilities, because you will not make much. But the experience, the connections, the friends and the patients I met made it all worth it. Give scribing a shot.

If you are privileged enough to have no real financial obligations, and your days are empty besides studying for a major entrance exam, this is for you. If making real money is a priority, and you're still in school, think a little harder about accepting this position. Danbury ED follows 9 hour schedules at CT minimum wage $10.10 an hour. Others who have been there for 1-2 years are making $11/hr (and these folks have their 4 yr degrees). Lunch breaks are not promised. Uniform is a polo and khakis. Payday is irregular -- kind of every 2 weeks but can be every 15-17 days (unpredictable). You have to remember to clock in and out after a shift. Onboarding between their vaccine requirements and training takes a month minimum.

The work itself is easy once you have a strong medical vocab. You type up an HPI, ROS, and Physical Exam findings and more info as it comes up. And the exposure to a doctor's medical decision making is invaluable. But the providers are not there to teach you or explain their decision making. Some are generous and do give you some time, but do not expect them to be a teacher/mentor during the shift. Do not expect them to learn your name. Do not expect to build relationships. Also hearing wealthy folks discuss some topics like politics and taxes and their lifestyle can be infuriating because you won't be part of the conversation. You will work with a different provider every shift so you will have to be at your site for 6+months before gaining a friendly talking relationship with some of them. Shifts are kind of lonely if the provider isn't social or is running around a lot. You definitely can't expect to build relationships with coworkers as its just you and the provider during the full shift. Coworkers will call out often despite providing their availability for the month and getting a schedule way in advance. Also management will just be your chief scribe who is likely around your age. Their boss doesn't interact much with scribes.

It's a great way to familiarize yourself with diagnoses, symptoms, treatment, vocabulary, and drugs. Especially if you have never been in a medical environment. But ask yourself how long you can stand/sit at a computer for 9 hour shifts at minimum wage with no socializing and no guarantee break? How permanent of a job do you need? Are you worth more than minimum wage with your skillset and your experience? Do you find this business practice predatory?

Oftentimes, working at ScribeAmerica is a pursuit that most embark upon to receive adequate experience before progressing into the medical field for more robust and engage careers. Due to this, the company believes that it is important to underpay their employees, overwork and demand unrealistic expectations, despite the majority of their employees maintaining a university-level status or working multiple jobs to ensure their ability to meet financial needs.

Additionally, the majority of manipulations stems from Management, as they have outlandish expectations for their employees. If a shift is suddenly uncovered by a peer, they will request that you cover it; and, if you state that you have other obligations, they will request that those be altered to meet their request. Expect financial enticement, such as $25 or $35 to pickup a shift, which some people view as beneficial but to me it is insulting when you're only making $8.00 - $11.00 an hour (~$64 - $88 per shift).

Furthermore, do not plan to ascend into a management position; there is a reason that Chief Scribe and Associate Chief Scribe positions are readily available, and it is due to the poor compensation and unrealistic demands being placed on these managing members. Compensation usually ranges from $12 - $14 per hour, and you'll be expected to oversee a team consisting of ~15 - 35 members; duties include scheduling, adjusting timecards, administrative tasks, such as communicating with Clinic Managers and Physicians, and other menial responsibilities. However, Management will enforce certain time restrictions, forcing you to either leave tasks uncompleted or rushing to complete those duties, leading to unsatisfactory performance and subsequent ramifications being imposed against you. One stark adjustment that was made to this level of management was the reduction of administrative pay; members were previously offered an additional $1.00 for an administrative tasks, which was tacked to their base pay when clocking in, however, the company is reducing costs and the lower managing members are experiencing the brunt force of these alterations.

Overall, this is a company that will utilize you for one purpose: to continue generating their profits. Expect work ethic, ambition, and stellar performance to be overlooked. If you're in dire need of experience related to the medical field, continue volunteering or receive a certification (EKG, CMA, EMT) that will allow you to gain hands-on, direct patient care, rather than being mistreated, underpaid, and manipulated. 

Depending on the setting, the role of a medical scribe can be highly stressful and fast-paced. In the ER setting, which is one of the most common settings for scribes, you are on your feet most of the day, getting no true breaks (sometimes barely having time to eat or use the bathroom), working holidays/weekends, switching between days and nights and everything in between, working 12 hour shifts at times, all while compiling medical legal documentation on a $10/hr salary. This only works well with the young, eager 20 year old pre-med high on the adrenaline of seeing medicine being practiced. Once that young, eager 20 year old becomes a weary 25 year old trying to pay rent on a $10/hr salary, it is time to move on to bigger and better things (paramedic/MA or graduate/nursing/PA/medical school). 

I have had good experiences with management and have been able to get good feedback about my performance, which may not necessarily be true for every individual within this company. Keep in most, most of your coworkers are young (undergraduate to mid 20s) and most of your immediate, on-site management is young (early to mid 20s). Sometimes, this can make work gossip-y, but for the most part, everyone is there to get a real professional experience in the medical field. There are very diverse opportunities within ScribeAmerica and you can work as a medical scribe while in school. The benefits this provides for learning about medicine cannot be emphasized enough. You are literally bearing witness to the provider's medical decision making process. It requires an adaptable personality as you have to work with sometimes several different providers with incredibly different personalities, while being able to accommodate each of them. However, if you care about the job, work hard, and want to be there, you will build great contacts within the medical field who will provide you with meaningful letters of rec and references for schools and careers. 

 I would recommend this job to undergraduate students yearning for a taste of the medical field and willing to put in the work required to get this taste. It is not ideal for people who have graduated and are paying back student loans, paying rent, and are STILL getting paid $10/hour to document the same kind of cases they have seen 20 times over their 4+ year stint as a scribe. This job is temporary. If you see it as that, it's one of the best experiences you can have.

As much as I loved scribing (and all of the physicians I worked with-- they rocked!), I would never, ever again recommend ScribeAmerica as a place of employment to any of my friends. 

I was promoted to Chief Scribe (entry-level management) 6 months into starting with the company, which was an awesome job and I was so excited. Three months later, I absorbed the duties of another Chief who had resigned, for a very fair pay raise. This meant that I was working overtime consistently, and traveling up to two hours to work (and then two hours back home). I kept up with all of my duties, met my deadlines for assignments and came into work on my days off when other scribes had called out. My team was majorly understaffed, but I did the best I could with the resources and minimal training I had. I never had enough employees on my roster at any given time to cover the shifts in my clinics. But I did the work gladly, and I definitely enjoyed it nonetheless. 

However, I recently learned that two of my managers spoke of me with distain to other chief scribes for "missing so much work." Another employee (and life-long friend) caught wind of this and stood up for me, because I was "missing so much work" (AKA-- missing my overtime shifts) while my dad was in hospice. Dying. 

How toxic, unprofessional and just plain un-compassionate. 

When I realized my dad's time was coming to an end, I made an Excel workbook for my manager and other chief scribes to use to know exactly how to do my job while I was out on the bereavement I was entitled to. It had everything a Chief could ever dream of, all in one place: contact information and schedules for all 35 of my scribes across 14 clinics, the draft schedule for the next month, contact information and shift sets for clinics, all information required for reports with upcoming deadlines, hiring needs, the training status and remaining tasks for the 8 or so new hires I was training... you name it, it was there. 

I did everything I could to make it easy for them-- but apparently that wasn't enough. YIKES. 0/10. Do not work here.

I took the blunt end of angry office managers for unstaffed shifts when I didn't have enough employees to fill shifts. However, I was understaffed due to the incompetence of the regional hiring manager, as it was not my job to recruit and hire scribes. I would have gladly done just that-- but that was not possible, seeing that I was doing the work of 2 Chiefs.

Really disappointed in this company. I was excited to scribe and learn more about the medical field. I have an English degree and no medical background. I'm not applying for med school. I enjoyed the virtual training, you get a lot of medical info immersion in a short amount of time. But I feel like they hardly go over the charting and how you should prepare for floor training, so I think they should fix that in their virtual training because that is the most important info to know. I only had 8 days of floor training and the girl training me, although very nice, wasn't a supervisor. She was just a employee who worked there only 6 months. I mostly observed her as she wasn't super good on explaining things. I didn't write many charts on my own during this time. I thought I would be getting more training by my chief scribe, so I took kind of a back seat in the training. Well, I was wrong. My chief scribe was with me like a day in total (split between 2 days because the day a supervisor was supposed to be there, no one showed up and I just did it all on my own). She didn't really help and seemed frustrated when I asked questions. The provider seemed nice at first, but then when I asked her some things she was very condescending and like "why would you even ask me that?" The chief scribe I had does not care about her employees and doesn't appear to have any proper management training. She's also in her early 20s. Long story short, I was let go after 8 days of floor training. The managers don't care about your success, don't help, and fire people quickly. It's a joke. I've never been fired before and only after 8 days. No one told me I was to know how to do the job perfectly after 8 days. I sort of get it because it is a  busy work load a typical day is 20 pts for my provider. But I am disappointed that they didn't even try to help me improve, so I could get better. They do not invest in their employees. Do not work here. The pay is very low for all the information you have to know, like everyone else said. They expect you to know way more medical information too than they cover. You don't get breaks really either, on your feet all day. It really bums me out because I think it could be a better place to work, but the training leaves scribes ill prepared. I guess it would depend if you had a better manager though. I'm really upset my manager didn't try to encourage me and help me. But with a company like that, it's for the best for me to not work there now.

I started as a pre-med student before the pandemic and loved it. Terrible shifts, bad managers, TERRIBLE PAY, but the experience was amazing and realistically, you never saw fellow scribes or your chief scribes (managers). Really, the worst part was the shifts, pay, and lack of respect from the higher-ups. I loved the physicians I worked with and made really awesome connections and learned a lot. 

Then COV!D hit. 

They put us on the ninth floor of the hospital and we were charting over zoom in a small room crowded with other scribes, sometimes 15 in the room at a time. In the thick of the pandemic at the hospital, I was sitting within 6 inches of 3 other scribes who may have gone to the bar the night before and who could have transmitted the virus. Many scribes actually gave other scribes the virus. They were never punished or talked to, which I kind of understand but it was very negligent. That was when I finally got a new job and officially left Scribe America. 

Finally, the hospital said "okay, no more" and kicked out all scribes from the hospital. They were apparently only charting over zoom from home. The physicians weren't happy with doing it over zoom when we were at the hospital, and many stopped using us at all which led to fewer and fewer shifts available to work - I can only imagine what it was like when they got sent home. 

Once I started having to actually work with my coworkers, it was he!!. They are toxic - everyone reads everyone's charts and will call you out about anything, not even important things. One time, a newer scribe told me the way I worded the age of my patient seemed incorrect (?????!!!). Don't even get me started on the managers (chief scribes). One of mine was nice, but the other was mean and honestly, people feared her. These are the people that do your scheduling, so once you get on their bad side, you're job goes downhill fast. 

Overall, do not work for Scribe America. They prey on pre-med students and refuse to pay decent because they know we are desperate for any kind of experience. It is not worth it! You are worth more than this! There are hundreds of places, small practices, that want to hire you and invest in you and help you get into medical school or graduate school. Do NOT bother with ScribeAmerica. 

In my experience with this company, I found several areas that need improvement. Firstly, resolving tech issues within a reasonable timeframe proved to be quite challenging. Timely responses from managers, particularly those in their residency, were also inconsistent, and at times, virtually non-existent.

Despite the initial promise of a minimum number of hours per week, managers consistently struggled to provide a consistent schedule. This inconsistency leaves employees grappling with financial instability and hinders their ability to plan their lives outside of work. It seemed they had hired a surplus of scribes without a corresponding increase in available providers, which led to an imbalance in workload. This imbalance severely impacted the ability to earn a reasonable income and maintain job stability. Manager's claims of having providers signing up often contrast with their ability to provide positions for all the scribes they hired. This disconnect between hiring and actual demand further adds to the lack of hours for scribes. Many employees end up in a "floating" division, which seems to serve as a cost-cutting measure to not have to pay current scribes an incentive to provide coverage, leaving the "floaters" feeling undervalued and underutilized. Aligning staffing levels with actual demand could improve the fairness of the work environment. 

While the company did offer exposure to valuable medical experience and the potential for networking with providers, these benefits were also hindered by the aforementioned issues. Inconsistent workload and hours made it difficult to fully capitalize on these networking opportunities and gain meaningful medical exposure. Overall, the company's management structure appeared to be riddled with mismanagement issues, resulting in a lack of consistency in various aspects of the job. If you are contemplating employment at ScribeAmerica, a careful evaluation of your options is recommended. While the company offers valuable clinical exposure, it is accompanied by significant challenges, including inconsistent work hours, technical support delays, and concerns regarding managerial accountability.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Medical scribe 58 salaries reported	$12.25 per hour
Director of business development 3 salaries reported	$112,500 per year
Account manager 3 salaries reported	$69,662 per year
Senior account manager 1 salary reported	$55,000 per year
Patient transporter 1 salary reported	$24.29 per hour

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