Encouraged by the potential for artificial intelligence-based scribes to ease clinician burnout and reduce administrative workload, health systems are busy piloting and then deploying ambient scribe technology. Healthcare Innovation has interviewed several chief medical information officers and chief digital and information officers about their progress so far. A recent Peterson Health Technology Institute (PHTI) report suggests that while ambient scribe technology is likely improving clinician burnout, the financial impact on health systems is unclear.
The report is based on extensive interviews and convenings with health system leaders, leading AI companies, and industry experts participating in PHTI’s AI Taskforce.
The Peterson report notes that physician adoption has been uneven. Often, there is one cohort of heavy users; another that uses ambient for some but not all visits; and another of low- or no-use clinicians, including those who tried and stopped.
Several organizations observed that the clinicians who saw the greatest benefit were those who had not yet optimized their documentation workflows, were consistently behind in notes, spent more time in conversation with their patients, or typically had longer summary notes, the report said.
In January 2025, Eric Poon, M.D., chief health information officer for Duke Health, spoke with Healthcare Innovation about the deployment starting there
The Abridge ambient AI platform will be available to 5,000 Duke Health clinicians at more than 150 primary and specialty clinics. The platform will be used throughout Duke Health Integrated Practice and Duke Primary Care clinics, which serve communities in the Triangle and other locations in North Carolina.
Poon said he is among the users impressed by the new technology in his own practice. “Before using this technology, I didn't realize, how much of my brain during a clinical visit I was devoting to being a core transcriptionist and typing up some cryptic notes in the electronic medical record as I talked to patients,” he said. “Once I could disconnect myself from the keyboard, I was able to have much more natural conversations with patients. The encounters actually went faster for me. I was able to finish my clinics visits more or less on time, which has never happened before. I started using this technology, and, of course, the notes were far easier to clean up afterwards.”
When Poon spoke to Healthcare Innovation, Duke was just beginning a widespread roll-out after receiving lots of positive feedback during the 160-provider trial. “I would say that we haven't heard this much positive feedback on technology for a long time, so that really made the decision to deploy the solution much easier for our leadership,” he said.
Poon is convinced that we're just beginning to see the introduction of generative AI into clinical practice. “I think ambient technology has come onto the scene very quickly. We also — separate from Abridge — are looking at how we can use AI to draft MyChart messages, something that other organizations have also been doing. We're doing a very thoughtful evaluation to think about where it adds value and where it's going to be used broadly. I think there are opportunities to use it for some administrative functions, to help with various aspects of revenue cycle, for coding, for chart reviews. I do think that the technology could summarize the complex information in the chart. It can really help bring clinicians closer to the bedside, so that clinicians return to what led them into the profession in the first place.”
Ambient AI in community health center settings
One commonly expressed concern about artificial intelligence in healthcare is that it could worsen disparities by being deployed only in large academic medical centers and not in community health centers that treat underserved populations. One voice AI company, Suki, is addressing that issue by partnering with Federally Qualified Health Centers. In 2023, Redwood City, Calif.-based Suki announced the integration of its AI-powered voice assistant with Oracle Cerner and Epic EHR software. The company said its Suki Assistant helps clinicians complete time-consuming administrative tasks by voice and announced the ability to generate clinical notes from ambiently listening to a patient-clinician conversation. By partnering with organizations that provide care in shortage areas and underserved communities, Suki said its voice AI Assistant is helping clinicians improve efficiency by cutting back administrative work hours and being more present during visits so that everyone is getting the care they deserve. The company is working with Utah Navajo Health System (UNHS), CenterPlace Health, Access Health Louisiana, and PrimeCare Health, to assist providers in addressing the significant volume of patients seeking quality care in underserved areas. “We have always prided ourselves in being early adopters of technology that will improve our organization, and Suki allows us to optimize our workflows, making what we do more effective,” said Michael Jensen, CEO at UNHS, in a statement. “We felt Suki was the most robust in terms of quality charting, the amount of time it took to train clinicians to use the product, and it’s easy to use. For our clinicians, the main differentiator of Suki was how well it integrated with our EHR system, Athena.” “It’s a lot for our clinicians to document and solve the intricate issues patients discuss, and Suki provides the support they need to ensure all information is recorded. Our adult health and psychiatry providers have seen the most change using Suki – it allows them to engage directly with their patients during the visit while capturing the entire appointment with few edits needed afterward,” said Lisa Gonzalez-Abello, M.D., chief medical officer at CenterPlace Health, in Sarasota, Fla. “Our mission is to make a difference in patients’ lives, and any tool that can give providers peace of mind is crucial to improving health outcomes.”
Last year, James Craven, M.D., a vascular surgeon who is president of Franciscan Health Physicians in Baton Rouge, La., spoke to Healthcare Innovation about integrating Suki with Epic at his health system. “We have a big initiative on closing the charts in a timely fashion. We found this was a great opportunity to help those providers who are struggling in that aspect and put them on a different trajectory,” he said. “We feel that those providers are not spending all that pajama time at home trying to finish some of this off. We really believe that we're just on the cusp of what this technology can do as it evolves. I really think it's going to simplify those patient encounters and the documentation requirements that are there.”
Laura Wilt, chief digital officer at California-based Sutter Health, said the motivation for Sutter to work with Abridge on automating documentation is driven both by provider experience and patient experience.
“We think there's a big opportunity to use technology to help bridge some of that gap. Our providers might have seen a lot of patients during the day and some of them are probably doing their notes in real time but others are waiting until the end of the day,” Wilt said. “And that work can feel very administrative, especially if you're doing it at the end of the day. Abridge really helps with that. You don't have to pile that work up at the end. You can really do it as you go.”
She said this is “one of the first things that we're going to do in terms of this type of technology across the entire Sutter Health footprint and have both primary care and specialists be involved.”
Wilt spoke about the innovation with Abridge on patient-facing summaries. “At the end of your visit, Sutter has been releasing the clinic notes into our portal for a number of years, just like most people have. As a patient you get that and you can read it but often it does not translate to what regular people know about healthcare,” she said. “One of the technologies Abridge has is to really translate that into a patient-friendly summary of what happened. Generative AI and large language models are great at translating, so this is really translating to more patient- friendly terms.”
Wilt said she thinks there's a huge opportunity to study how much more engaged patients might be in their care if they understand the documentation and notes better.
Ambient scribe vendors integrate more deeply into clinical workflows
In a competitive marketplace, the Peterson report noted, ambient scribe companies are differentiating by expanding the user base into nursing and other clinical roles; extending into the revenue cycle and adjacent administrative workflows; integrating more deeply into clinical workflows, such as visit preparation, referrals, and orders; and offering highly customized or co-developed ambient scribes at the specialty level.
The evidence base for ambient scribes improving efficiency directly by reducing documentation time and, thereby, creating capacity is limited; however, the report notes that as the technology and implementation processes improve, time savings may become more apparent.
As ambient scribes extend into coding with the promise of optimizing evaluation and management (E&M) and hierarchical condition category (HCC) coding, the report notes that it is reasonable to expect that given existing incentive structures, ambient scribes will support higher level coding, which — even if accurate — may increase healthcare spending and the costs of care.
The Peterson report found that the few published peer-reviewed studies show mixed results based on heterogeneous measures and methods. Standardized metrics would improve the ability to understand how these solutions impact the system, including (1) clinician impact, (2) patient impact, and (3) financial impact.
