A Clark County (Wash.) Superior Court judge has ruled that patients don’t have a legal right to access ambient AI recordings physicians use to draft clinical notes, siding with The Vancouver (Wash.) Clinic in one of the first rulings nationwide to address the legal status of AI scribe technology.
The case, Raphael v. Mantei, centered on patient Gail Raphael’s request for the ambient AI recording of a telehealth visit with her physician at The Vancouver Clinic. Ms. Raphael argued the recording, made using Nuance’s DAX ambient AI system, didn’t qualify for an exception under Washington’s Uniform Health Care Information Act. The clinic countered that the recording served only an administrative purpose and wasn’t part of the official medical record, since physicians edit the AI-generated draft before finalizing a patient’s chart.
The court agreed. “The DAX recording is exempt from disclosure under the Uniform Healthcare Information Act,” the court said in its August order, comparing the recordings to dictation and handwritten notes physicians have long used as drafting aids.
The Litigation Center of the American Medical Association and State Medical Societies, the Washington State Medical Association and the Washington State Hospital Association filed a joint amicus brief in the case, arguing that ambient AI tools shouldn’t be treated differently than other note-drafting aids under state records law. The ruling gives hospital legal and compliance teams an early precedent as ambient AI scribes spread across exam rooms nationwide.
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