Study Shows Ambient Scribes Cut Documentation Time When Used Frequently
Clinicians who use speech-to-text ambient documentation tools for more than half their patient encounters see meaningful reductions in charting time, according to research from Mass General Brigham and UCSF published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The two-year study tracked ambient documentation patterns across five U.S. hospitals and involved 1,800 clinicians using AI for healthcare scribes, compared with 6,770 control clinicians at the same institutions.
What the data showed
Clinicians using ambient scribes saw modest but measurable gains: about 13 minutes less time in the EHR and 16 minutes less documentation time per day. That translates to a 3% reduction in EHR use and a 10% reduction in documentation time.
The tools also enabled about 0.5 additional patient visits per week and generated roughly $167 per month in additional revenue per clinician.
The biggest improvements appeared among primary care physicians, advanced practice providers, female clinicians, and those who used the technology in at least half their encounters. Clinicians in this high-use group experienced twice the reduction in total EHR time and three times the reduction in documentation time compared to lower-frequency users.
Yet only 32% of users adopted the technology that frequently.
The burnout question
Ambient scribes are built on the premise that reducing documentation burden will ease clinician burnout. Burnout affects more than half of U.S. physicians, driven largely by time spent in electronic health records both during and after work hours.
Dr. Rebecca G. Mishuris, chief health information officer at Mass General Brigham and senior author of the study, said the modest time savings alone don't fully explain why prior research has linked these tools to decreased burnout.
"The modest reductions in documentation time we observed are unlikely to fully account for changes in burnout, underscoring the need to understand how these tools change how clinicians approach care delivery while using them," Mishuris said.
Adoption remains a barrier
The findings suggest that hospitals and health systems exploring these tools need to focus on getting clinicians to use them consistently. The study found that time spent in the EHR outside of work hours did not significantly differ between groups - meaning the tools haven't yet solved the after-hours documentation problem.
Dr. Lisa Rotenstein, lead author and associate professor of medicine at UCSF, emphasized that frequent use is essential. "Our study demonstrates the impact of AI scribes in diverse real-world implementations at multiple sites," Rotenstein said. "It also emphasizes the value of helping clinicians become comfortable with the technology so that they are reaping its full benefits via frequent use."
The Ambient Clinical Documentation Collaborative, which produced these findings, is continuing to study how these tools might address other factors contributing to clinician burnout beyond documentation time alone.
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