The Peterson Health Technology Institute’s latest technology review is here, and it had a decidedly mixed report card for the ambient AI scribes sweeping across the industry.
PHTI’s total count of ambient scribe vendors stands at over 60, but the bulk of its report focuses on the early experiences and lessons learned from the top 10 scribes across leading health systems.
According to PHTI’s conversations with health system execs, the primary driver of ambient scribe adoption has been addressing clinician burnout – and AI’s promise is clear on that front.
- Mass General Brigham reported a 40% reduction in burnout during a six-week pilot.
- MultiCare reported a 63% reduction in burnout and a 64% improvement in work-life balance.
- Another study from the Permanente Medical Group found that 81% of patients felt their physician spent less time looking at their computer when using an ambient scribe.
Despite these drastic improvements, PHTI concludes that the financial returns and efficiency of ambient scribes remain unclear.
- On one hand, enhanced documentation quality “could lead to higher reimbursements, potentially offsetting expenses.”
- On the other hand, the cumulative costs “may be greater than any savings achieved through improved efficiency, reduced administrative burden, or reduced clinician attrition.”
It’s a bold conclusion considering the cost of losing a single provider, let alone the downstream effects of having a burned out workforce.
PHTI’s advice to health systems? Define the outcomes you’re looking for and then measure ambient AI’s performance and financial impacts against those goals. Bit of a no-brainer, but sound advice nonetheless.
The Takeaway
Ambient scribes are seeing the fastest adoption of any recent healthcare technology that wasn’t accompanied by a regulatory mandate, and that’s mostly because of magic that’s hard to capture in a spreadsheet. That said, health systems will eventually need to justify these solutions beyond their impact on the clinical experience, and PHTI’s report brings a solid framework and standardized methodologies for bridging that gap.
