Health systems across the U.S. have begun scaling ambient artificial intelligence tools in a bid to ease one of clinicians’ biggest burdens: documentation. But is the technology delivering on its promise?
Documentation and related administrative tasks cost the U.S. healthcare system about $1 trillion annually and contribute to clinician burnout, high turnover and late-night charting, according to Becker’s reporting. To combat this, organizations are investing in ambient AI with the goal of reducing documentation demands and restoring “joy” to medicine by giving clinicians more time with patients.
“Ambient listening has come a long way in helping clinicians focus on what matters most: their patients,” said Rick Leesmann, CIO of Sky Lakes Medical Center in Klamath Falls, Ore.
A Jan. 27 study published in The American Journal of Managed Care found that nearly two-thirds of U.S. hospitals using Epic’s EHR had adopted ambient AI tools for clinical documentation as of June 2025. A March 2025 report from the Peterson Health Technology Institute found that ambient scribes are on track to become one of the fastest-adopted technologies in healthcare history.
At Marlton, N.J.-based Virtua Health, the technology has already shown benefits.
“Ambient listening technologies have significantly improved clinical documentation processes at Virtua Health and across the industry,” CIO Tom Gordon told Becker’s. “By automatically capturing patient-provider conversations, these solutions have reduced administrative burden on clinicians, enhanced the accuracy of medical records, and improved the overall patient experience. Providers can spend more time focusing on patient care rather than manual notetaking, which has contributed to greater job satisfaction and reduced burnout.”
But the technology still has gaps.
At Atlantic City, N.J.-based AtlantiCare, which uses Oracle Health’s Clinical AI Agent, CIO Jordan Ruch outlined three core limitations. First, there are no national standards for ambient clinical AI, which forces vendors to interpret key issues like privacy and data structuring differently. This shifts governance responsibilities onto health systems. Second, the tools don’t work equally well across care settings. Nurses, for example, often prefer discrete, command-based tools instead of always-on listening. Third, ambient AI still functions largely as a documentation add-on, rather than an integrated part of clinical and operational workflows like orders, handoffs and scheduling.
“These gaps are shaping our roadmap toward solutions that are interoperable, role-specific, and deeply embedded in the clinical system, not just better at transcribing conversations, but better at completing the work that follows them,” Mr. Ruch told Becker’s.
Several CIOs echoed that while ambient AI improves documentation, it falls short of reducing downstream work. At Sky Lakes, Mr. Leesmann said ambient listening helps clinicians stay focused during visits, but “as soon as the AI wraps the session, the onus falls back on the care team to disseminate and distribute the information. The documentation is cleaner, but the workflow gaps are still there.”
He added, “I want the fully integrated experience, tools that trigger the right processes to ensure nothing from the appointment gets missed. Order the lab work. Flag the follow-up. Route the referral.”
At Whitefield, N.H.-based North Country Healthcare, CIO Darrell Bodnar said the same limitation persists: “Most tools do a good job creating notes, yet they struggle to reliably support orders, referrals, charge capture and care plan updates.” He said the barrier is less about AI capability and more about EHR integration maturity, available APIs and governance.
Tom Barnett, chief information and digital officer of Memphis, Tenn.-based Baptist Memorial Health Care, said organizations should look beyond note creation and measure the entire patient encounter.
“I think ambient listening focuses on one part of the overall workflow. It is an important part as it directly impacts physicians, but we also need to look at the elapsed time it takes for the entire encounter to be closed — not just the physician documentation,” he said.
CIOs also pointed to the technology’s clinician-centric design as a limitation for team-based care.
“Ambient listening has helped provider documentation, but it’s still too clinician-centric and doesn’t address nursing, therapy or team-based workflows,” Michelle Gelroth, CIO of Aspen (Colo.) Valley Hospital, told Becker’s.
She said that gap is shifting AI investments toward intelligent patient rooms and embedded tools that support safety, experience and multidisciplinary care.
At Virtua Health, Mr. Gordon said the next evolution of ambient AI will include real-time decision support and tools that can turn conversations into actions.
“Some challenges or opportunities exist with ambient listening such as real-time decision support and actionable tasks,” he said. “While ambient listening can capture conversations, it often lacks the capability to provide actionable, real-time clinical decision support during patient encounters.”
Virtua is exploring tools that can analyze conversations in real time and offer clinical insights, recommendations and actions.
For many CIOs, these limitations will determine whether ambient AI remains a documentation tool or evolves into something more foundational.
“That’s what will shape my next investment decisions,” Mr. Leesmann said. “Can this tool actually improve continuity of care while collapsing technological silos, or is it just making one piece of the process less painful?”
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