{"id":376836,"date":"2026-04-01T17:41:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T17:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/376836\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T17:41:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T17:41:11","slug":"study-involving-mgb-showed-modest-benefit-for-doctors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/376836\/","title":{"rendered":"Study involving MGB showed modest benefit for doctors"},"content":{"rendered":"

To relieve physicians of burdensome record-keeping, many health care systems<\/a> have in recent years introduced artificial intelligence scribes, technology that \u201clistens\u201d to conversations between doctors and patients and automatically create summaries of appointments.<\/p>\n

But a study published on Wednesday<\/a> in JAMA found that the scribes only modestly decreased how long doctors spent documenting medical appointments. Physicians must still review electronic medical charts and approve the summaries, even if they use the scribes.<\/p>\n

The study, whose authors included researchers affiliated with Mass General Brigham, found that the technology reduced the amount of time clinicians spent documenting appointments by an average of 16 minutes throughout a day. The providers saw patients for eight hours a day.<\/p>\n

Put another way, the scribes freed up doctors in a variety of specialties to see one additional patient every two weeks, as physicians used the extra time for other work-related duties such as answering patients\u2019 questions on web portals, according to Ryan Jaslow, an MGB spokesperson.<\/p>\n

The clinicians who benefited the most from the scribes were doctors, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants who work in primary care. Primary care providers have a large amount of \u201ccharting\u201d responsibilities as a result of the wide-ranging conversations that occur during appointments.<\/p>\n

Those providers saved an average of 27 minutes a day as a result of the scribes, although even with the technology, they still spent more than two and a half hours documenting visits daily. MGB has about 1,000 primary care providers who use the scribes. <\/p>\n

\u201cCertain groups like primary care physicians and physicians who use the scribes more may gain a particular benefit,\u201d said lead author Dr. Lisa Rotenstein<\/a>, an associate professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine who directs the Center for Physician Experience and Practice Excellence at Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital.<\/p>\n

Researchers from Mass General Brigham and UCSF led the research.<\/p>\n

The study examined the practices of 8,581 clinicians, including 1,809 clinicians who used the scribes and 6,772 who didn\u2019t. The clinicians worked at five health care systems: Mass General Brigham, Yale New Haven Health System, Emory Healthcare, University of California at Davis Health, and UCSF Health.<\/p>\n

Previous studies have linked the technology to reduced burnout in physicians. A study published last August<\/a> in JAMA Network Open and co-led by MGB and Emory researchers found that AI scribes led to a 21 percent decline in self-reported burnout. <\/p>\n

But the \u201cmodest reductions in documentation time we observed are unlikely to fully account for changes in burnout,\u201d said the senior author of the latest study, Dr. Rebecca Mishuris<\/a>, chief health information officer at MGB.<\/p>\n

Clinicians who used AI scribes for more than half of patient visits experienced the biggest reduction in documentation time, according to the study. Yet only one-third of doctors who adopted the technology used it that much.<\/p>\n

MGB began using AI scribes in July 2023 with a pilot program involving about 18 clinicians to make sure it accurately recorded details of patient visits, said Jaslow.<\/p>\n

MGB rolled out the technology throughout the system last April, and currently about 4,500 clinicians \u2014 out of a total of 7,780 \u2014 in a variety of specialties use it, said Jaslow. <\/p>\n

Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jonathan.saltzman@globe.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To relieve physicians of burdensome record-keeping, many health care systems have in recent years introduced artificial intelligence scribes,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[103,397,396,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-376836","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}