AI scribes most help physicians who document more to begin with, according to research in the American Journal of Managed Care.
Here are five takeaways from the Jan. 8 study by researchers affiliated with University of California San Francisco and UCSF Health:
1. Most physicians (86.5%) felt that using an AI scribe reduced their documentation time, but there was no strong statistical association between perceived and objectively measured documentation time reductions.
2. For every 10% increase in the proportion of encounters where the AI scribe was used, documentation time dropped by just over 30 seconds per scheduled clinical hour — a modest but measurable improvement.
3. Physicians who were less efficient at documentation before using the AI scribe saw larger reductions in documentation time compared with their more efficient peers.
4. The results suggest that focusing AI scribe use on clinicians with high documentation time could produce a positive return on investment, since those providers realized the most time savings.
5. While subjective impressions were overwhelmingly positive regarding time saved, the actual measured time savings were relatively modest on average, indicating that benefits may be more nuanced than perceptions suggest.
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