To relieve physicians from the burden of record keeping, multiple health care systems In recent years artificial intelligence scribes, technology that “listens” to conversations between doctors and patients and automatically creates summaries of appointments, have been introduced.
but a The study was published on Wednesday JAMA found that the treatments only modestly reduced the time doctors spent documenting medical appointments. Physicians must still review electronic medical charts and approve summaries, even if they use scribes.
The study, whose authors included researchers associated with Mass General Brigham, found that the technology reduced the time it took physicians to document appointments by an average of 16 minutes a day. Providers saw patients eight hours a day.
In other words, the scribes gave doctors from different specialties the flexibility to see one additional patient every two weeks, According to MGB spokesman Ryan Zaslow, physicians used the extra time to perform other work-related duties such as answering patients’ questions on a web portal.
The practitioners who benefited most from scribes were doctors, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants working in primary care. Primary care providers have a large amount of “charting” responsibilities as a result of the extensive conversations that occur during appointments.
Those providers saved an average of 27 minutes per day as a result of the authors, although even with the technology, they still spent more than two and a half hours per day documenting visits. MGB has approximately 1,000 primary care providers who use writers.
“Certain groups such as primary care physicians and physicians who use scribes more may have a particular benefit,” the lead author said. Dr. Lisa RotensteinAn associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, who directs the Center for Physician Experience and Practice Excellence at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Researchers at Mass General Brigham and UCSF led the research.
The study examined the practices of 8,581 physicians, including 1,809 physicians who used Shastris and 6,772 physicians who did not use Shastris. The physicians worked in five health care systems: Mass General Brigham, Yale New Haven Health System, Emory Healthcare, University of California at Davis Health, and UCSF Health.
Previous studies have linked the technology to reduced burnout in physicians. A study published last August In JAMA Network Open and co-led by MGB and Emory, researchers found that AI writers led to a 21 percent drop in self-reported burnout.
But the senior author of the latest study said, “The modest reductions in documentation time that we observed are unlikely to be entirely responsible for the change in burnout.” Dr. Rebecca MishourisChief Health Information Officer in MGB.
According to the study, physicians who used AI scribes for more than half of their patient visits experienced the greatest reduction in documentation time. Yet only one-third of doctors who adopted this technology used it that much.
Zaslow said MGB began using AI Scribe in July 2023 with a pilot program involving about 18 physicians to ensure it accurately recorded patient visit details.
MGB rolled out the technology systemwide last April and currently about 4,500 physicians — out of a total of 7,780 — use it in various specialties, Zaslow said.
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jonathan.saltzman@globe.com.
