A quality improvement study found that clinicians who enrolled in an ambient artificial intelligence (AI) medical scribe program spent less time documenting patient visits, with the greatest time savings seen among those who used the tool most often. Frequent users reduced the time spent actively working on notes by about 2.5 minutes per encounter; however, there were no associated improvements seen in after-hours documentation, same-day note completion, or productivity. The findings are published in Annals of Internal Medicine.
Researchers from Beth Israel Lahey Health and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center analyzed more than 1.6 million patient encounters involving 902 clinicians in the Beth Israel Lahey Health system between July 2024 and January 2026 to evaluate whether enrollment in an AI-powered scribe tool reduced documentation burden for outpatient clinicians and whether the benefits varied based on how often clinicians used the technology. The primary outcome was note-active time per encounter, quantified as minutes spent with notes open in the electronic health record. They found that after enrollment, clinicians experienced an immediate 1.2-minute reduction in note-active time per encounter. High users experienced a 2.5-minute reduction per encounter, whereas minimal change was observed among clinicians who integrated the AI-scribe less or not at all into their clinical practice. However, use of the tool did not improve same-day note completion, reduce after-hours documentation, or increase clinical productivity. The study did not examine the quality of the notes. The authors conclude that ambient AI scribes may help ease documentation workload, especially when used regularly, but further research is warranted to evaluate their impact on other measures of efficiency.