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Ambient scribes are perhaps the most talked-about artificial intelligence technology in healthcare today. The big promise these listening tools represent – reduction in documentation burden, easing of clinician burnout, restoring a bit of joy to medicine – are like catnip to overworked clinicians.
But AI scribes are anything but a plug-and-play technology. And even when the data governance and workflow questions have been effectively addressed, there's still no promise that they'll do what they say they will.
A new report from Mass General Brigham and University of California San Francisco Health suggests that, properly deployed, ambient tools can indeed effect modest but noticeable reductions in documentation time.
The research behind the study was substantial, with informatics experts from MGB and UCSF tracking ambient documentation patterns across five U.S hospitals over two years.
They found that scribes enabled "modest daily reductions" in charting: about 13 minutes in EHR use and 16 minutes of documentation time – a relative decrease of 3% and 10%, respectively.
Published this past week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the research also suggested that AI scribes had helped with a slight increase in productivity, enabling about 0.5 additional patient visits per week.
The study's senior author, Dr. Rebecca G. Mishuris, chief health information officer at Mass General Brigham, said the study's findings help bolster the case that hospitals and health systems should be exploring how ambient technologies could work for them – and whether and how they might fit into clinician workflows.
"Previous studies link ambient documentation to a significant decrease in burnout, but the underlying drivers of this reduction have been unclear," Mishuris said in a statement. "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."
THE LARGER TREND
Mass General Brigham has been exploring the potential promise of ambient documentation tools and other technologies that could help reduce clinician burnout for some time.
With burnout affecting more than half of U.S. physicians – mostly because of voluminous EHR time, both in the exam room and after hours, with evidence too that the mere "anticipation of needing to complete their appointment notes" is a stressor, MGB researchers have seen promise in natural language processing.
"Ambient documentation technology has been truly transformative in freeing up physicians from their keyboards to have more face-to-face interaction with their patients," said Mishuris about another similar study in 2025. "Our physicians tell us that they have their nights and weekends back and have rediscovered their joy of practicing medicine."
These most recent findings are the first published results of the Ambient Clinical Documentation Collaborative, a multi-organizational research effort, spearheaded by UCSF Health and comprising more than 1,800 clinicians, there and elsewhere, who use AI scribes, compared with 6,770 control clinicians at the same institutions.
"The most pronounced improvements in EHR use and documentation patterns were observed among primary care physicians, advanced practice providers, female clinicians and those who used ambient documentation in at least half of their patient encounters," researchers said about the April 2026 study.
"Clinicians who used AI scribes for more than 50% of visits experienced twice the reduction in total EHR time and three times the reduction in documentation time, yet only 32% of users adopted the technologies that frequently."
Meanwhile, there was an additional benefit observed: "Revenue increases associated with seeing more patients were statistically significant, but nominal," totaling about $167 per month, per clinician adopting an AI scribe.
Still, in the most recent study, at least, "time spent using the EHR outside of work hours did not significantly differ between groups." But more studies from the collaborative are ongoing to explore how ambient tools might help reduce factors contributing to burnout.
ON THE RECORD
"Ambient documentation use is expanding rapidly across U.S. healthcare, making it essential to study how these technologies are impacting clinicians in real time," Dr. Lisa Rotenstein, lead and corresponding author of the new research, said in a statement.
"Our study demonstrates the impact of AI scribes in diverse real-world implementations at multiple sites," added Rotenstein, who is associate professor of medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine and director of The Center for Physician Experience and Practice Excellence at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
"It also emphasizes the value of helping clinicians become comfortable with the technology so that they are reaping its full benefits via frequent use," she said.
Mike Miliard is Executive Editor of Healthcare IT News
Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS publication.
