Angelo Milazzo, MD, chief medical officer of integrated practice at Duke Health in Durham, N.C., isn't quick to use the term "game changer" when describing technology tools in healthcare.
But he doesn't hesitate in using the descriptor for ambient clinical documentation.
"It really is disruptive," Dr. Milazzo told Becker's. "It is a seismic change in the way we practice."
He's hardly alone in that sentiment. Already, AI documentation tools are alleviating administrative burdens for clinicians, with health system executives increasingly optimistic about the technology's potential to drive improvements in recruitment and retention, patient experience, care quality and access. Following a successful pilot, Duke Health expanded Abridge's tool to 5,000 physicians and advanced practice providers across more than 150 clinics in January. Dr. Milazzo first tested the tool at his practice in November.
"In my more than 20 years at Duke, I have never seen something go so quickly from pilot to implementation," he said. "We recognized right away that we couldn't take this away from people."
Clinicians who have used ambient note-writing tools throughout pilots over the past year at numerous academic health systems have reported spending less time on documentation outside of work hours and higher job satisfaction.
Marjorie Bessel, MD, chief clinical officer at Phoenix-based Banner Health anticipates all of the system's physicians will have an ambient listening tool fine tuned for their speciality within the next 18 months. One of her deliverables is to reduce administrative burden for clinicians by 50% within the next five years — a goal she anticipates ambient technology will contribute greatly to.
"That is a huge, audacious goal," she said on an upcoming episode of the Becker's Healthcare podcast. "When you have me back in five years, I'm going to tell you that we got it done together here at Banner Health, and it's going to be through these AI and technology investments that make the day and the life of the clinician better."
Patient experience and access are other areas where leaders anticipate the technology to yield meaningful improvements. Health system leaders acknowledge it's a tough time to ask their teams to do more, largely viewing ambient AI documentation tools as an organic way to open up access for patients. At Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, for instance, physicians who used the DAX Copilot platform from Microsoft subsidiary Nuance during a four-month pilot reported a 30% decrease in documentation load, and saw an additional 11.3 patients per month. Still, leaders caution against tying these tools' use to rigid expectations and instead view this as an organic, secondary benefit.
While pilots have mostly focused on primary care, many health systems are already exploring the technology's use in other settings. An emergency department pilot is currently underway at Duke Health, Dr. Milazzo said. Eventually, the goal is to introduce the technology in procedural areas and inpatient settings.
Duke Health is currently working with Abridge to co-develop a version of the tool for use in the operating room, which would capture surgeons' narration during a procedure. By the time the procedure is done, the surgical team will have a full operative note drafted.
"Think about how freeing that will be — think about the impact on efficiency, on turnover time and on quality, if we can alleviate a surgeon from having to remember everything they did in the operation and have them hyper-focused on the task in front of them," Dr. Milazzo said.
"This is going to be something that systems are going to be at a huge disadvantage in recruitment if they don't have these tools."