Dive Brief:
- Use of artificial intelligence scribes is linked to modest declines in clinicians’ electronic health record use and in the time it takes them to document patient care, according to a new study.
- Clinicians’ uptake of an AI scribe, which generally record providers’ conversations with patients and draft clinical notes, was associated with 13 fewer minutes each day in the EHR and 16 fewer minutes in documentation time, the study published Wednesday in JAMA found.
- AI scribe adoption was also linked to a 1.7% increase in weekly visit volume, increasing revenue by $167 each month per clinician.
Dive Insight:
AI being used to help providers take notes on their patients’ care is one of the most common ways the technology has been adopted in healthcare.
A slew of technology companies — including Microsoft, Oracle, Epic, Amazon and Abridge — have rolled out AI tools that can listen to providers’ conversations with their patients and generate documentation.
The tools should help lessen clinicians’ administrative work, which has become a major challenge for providers and a source of burnout, tech companies say. Providers have long raised concerns about the amount of time they spend on EHR tasks like documentation that drag into after-work hours and distract from patient care.
Still, there are few large-scale studies showing how the scribes affect clinician workflows, researchers said in the study. Their analysis — conducted at five academic medical centers across the country, including more than 8,500 clinicians — could give health systems more insights on the potential benefits of these tools, they added.
Overall, the research found using an AI scribe was associated with a 3% decrease in providers’ total time in the EHR, and a 10% decline in time spent on documentation.
Some groups experienced more significant improvements, including primary care providers, advanced practice clinicians, female providers and clinicians who used the scribes in 50% or more of their visits.
For example, primary care clinicians who adopted AI spent 25 fewer minutes in their EHR daily and nearly 27 fewer minutes on documentation. Providers who used the scribe more frequently spent 21 fewer minutes in their health records systems and 27 fewer minutes on clinical notes, according to the research.
Additionally, adopting an AI scribe was associated with 0.5 additional patient appointments per week, which translated into a bump in evaluation and management revenue each month.
The $167 in additional funds is a small amount, but it could be viewed as a “conservative lower bound” of the financial benefits from AI scribe adoption that health systems can compare to implementation costs, researchers wrote.
However, AI scribe adoption wasn’t linked to less time on EHR tasks outside of work hours. That could suggest clinicians are using time savings from their scribes to handle other work, like responding to messages from patients or reviewing documentation for accuracy, researchers wrote.
