Somerville, Mass.-based Mass General Brigham continues to report benefits from ambient AI scribes as the health system aims to get adoption of the technology above 50%.
The organization’s latest research found that a hybrid approach — where virtual human scribes finalized the notes generated by AI — was associated with a 41% decrease in after-hours work, a two-thirds drop in notes left incomplete two days after a visit, and a 12% rise in productivity.
“It’s really important that we don’t just go after shiny objects, but we actually go after technology or interventions that actually address the challenges we’re having,” Rebecca Mishuris, MD, vice president and chief medical information officer of Mass General Brigham, told Becker’s.
She called the hybrid technique a “stepping stone” on the way to full AI scribes and doesn’t expect it to scale. Instead, Mass General Brigham is rolling out ambient listening to as many clinicians as possible; the health system has offered it to all of its physicians and advanced practice providers, with about 4,000 using it.
Dr. Mishuris said an adoption rate of about 50% has been the industry benchmark, in line with the number of providers who embraced voice-to-text dictation. But she predicts that percentage will gradually increase, with the technology eventually becoming “table stakes” in healthcare.
The November paper in the Journal of General Internal Medicine builds on Mass General Brigham’s ongoing research into AI scribes. With the applications costing around a few hundred dollars a month per provider, health system leaders will want to keep seeing results.
Ambient AI was associated with a 21% drop in clinician burnout at Mass General Brigham, an August study found. The researchers are examining whether those gains persist over the course of the year and the precise mechanisms behind the increase in provider well-being. The health system uses Abridge and Microsoft’s Dragon Copilot.
“There is something about ambient documentation that addresses burnout through putting joy back into the practice of medicine, not just by reducing my documentation time … but by putting me back in the room with the patient,” Dr. Mishuris said.
She argues that expecting providers to document faster so they cram in more patients is the “antithesis” of reducing burnout. Happier physicians also stay in the practice longer.
The AI isn’t cheap, though declining computing costs are making it more economical, but Dr. Mishuris believes the expenditures are justified.
“If we can prevent [burnout] with technology like this, in a way that no other intervention has been able to, it’s … clearly worth it,” she said.
