AI Scribes Reduce Physician Burnout and Return Focus to the Patient

Physicians now spend more than half of their workdays at their computers documenting appointments—what their patients reported, the recommendations given, any future steps to take—in electronic health records. And increasing amounts of documentation time are driving mass burnout, pushing doctors out of practice, particularly in primary care where the burden hits hardest.

But AI may be able to help. In a new study, researchers found that using ambient AI scribes—tools that work in the background and document patient visits into structured medical notes—dramatically reduced physician burnout after just one month of use.

The findings were published in JAMA Network Open.

"It's about human engagement," says senior author Lee Schwamm, MD, associate dean for digital strategy and transformation, professor of neurology, and professor of biomedical informatics and data science at Yale School of Medicine (YSM). "We thought this might be a really powerful tool to reinvigorate the patient-clinician encounter, to make it more of a conversation again.”

For the study, researchers surveyed 263 physicians at six U.S. health systems—a mix of academic medical centers and community hospitals—both before they started using an AI scribe (developed by the company Abridge) and 30 days after. Burnout was assessed on a five-point scale, with scores of 3 (beginning to burnout with one or more symptoms), 4 (burnout symptoms won’t go away), and 5 (feeling completely burned out) classified as experiencing burnout.

After using the AI scribe for patient visits, the percentage of physicians reporting burnout dropped from 51.9% to 38.8%—representing 74% lower odds of experiencing burnout. And these benefits extended across different health care environments. Previous studies on the efficacy of AI scribes in reducing burnout have been limited to small, single-center studies. But this study is, to the authors' knowledge, the first large, multicenter evaluation to assess the effect of AI scribes on clinician experience.

“Ambient AI is so exciting to me because it allows technology to fade into the background and allows care to come to the foreground,” says Allen Hsiao, MD, professor of pediatrics and of emergency medicine at YSM and chief health information officer at Yale New Haven Health. “It takes a huge cognitive burden off of physicians so they no longer need to concentrate on computer screens and typing but instead can fully focus on the patient.”

Hsiao is now regularly using ambient AI in his clinical practice as are more than 1,000 other physicians in the Yale New Haven Health System.

Physician burnout is a critical issue. When a physician leaves practice, it disrupts the continuity of care for patients and costs health care systems between $800,000 and $1.3 million in recruitment and lost productivity. Research has shown that medical groups with low burnout rates deliver higher quality of care and retain doctors committed to full-time work.

“Clinicians who use an AI scribe consistently report that it significantly reduces the time it takes for them to complete their documentation,” says Brian L. Williams, MD, medical informatics officer at Yale New Haven Health. “This has made their lives, both at work and outside of work, measurably better.”

YSM researchers are now studying how to integrate AI scribes into medical training without causing what Schwamm calls "cognitive atrophy or de-skilling,” where the person stops knowing how to do the task. For that study, students will interact with simulated patients while AI listens in the background, then they will compare their handwritten notes to the AI version, blending both to produce better documentation while still learning the fundamentals.

Apart from training future doctors, this technology is also restoring what is often lost in modern medicine.

“By inadvertently focusing on data entry into electronic health records, we’ve unintentionally diminished the unspoken language of care—the gestures, empathy, and human connection that once defined the patient–physician relationship,” says Hsiao. “Abridge is a powerful AI tool that is helping us restore that balance.”