Ambient AI Helps 93% of Doctors Provide Patients with Their “Full Attention”, Sutter Health Study Shows
Key Takeaways:
- Ambient augmented intelligence significantly reduced after-hours documentation and cognitive burden among participating clinicians, with 93 percent reporting they could give patients their full attention.
- Burnout indicators improved, with self-reported after-hours note-taking falling sharply and overall stress scores declining following the pilot’s introduction.
- Despite early challenges around EHR integration and note customisation, clinicians expressed strong enthusiasm for continued use and future development of the technology.
Introduction: Tackling documentation burden with ambient AI
For many clinicians, the administrative workload associated with electronic health record (EHR) systems extends well into the evening, contributing to frustration, diminished work satisfaction and widespread burnout. At Sutter Health in California, leaders have undertaken a substantial effort to determine whether ambient augmented intelligence (AI) could help relieve this pressure and restore time and attention to patient care.
A recent pilot study, published in JAMA Network Open, involved physicians and non-physician providers across the organisation. Participants reported spending less time on after-hours notes, feeling more present with patients during consultations and experiencing early signs of reduced stress. Although limitations remain, the findings suggest that carefully implemented AI-supported documentation could contribute meaningfully to clinician well-being.
National data from the American Medical Association (AMA) illustrate the scale of the problem. Burnout rates among physicians peaked at 62.8 percent in 2021, before falling back to near-2011 levels by 2023. Clinicians remain 82 percent more likely to report burnout than workers in other fields, according to research published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
The documentation challenge: A core driver of burnout
The EHR has long been identified as a key contributor to rising workload. Prior research shows that clinicians are “spending two hours of desktop medicine documenting for every hour that they’re spending with patients,” noted Veena Jones, MD, a paediatrician and Sutter Health’s Chief Medical Information Officer, speaking at the 2025 American Conference on Physician Health in Boston.
Sutter Health is a member of the AMA Health System Member Program, which supports health systems with enterprise-level tools designed to strengthen leadership and improve the future of clinical care.
Dr Jones highlighted the cumulative impact of documentation on clinician well-being: “Another national survey showed that about 77 percent of physicians reported that these excessive documentation tasks were leading to longer clinic hours or the need to work from home. Those clinicians who indicated that they had a more favourable view and experience and were highly satisfied with the EHR were less likely to be burned out, which can suggest that changes made to the EHR, particularly through documentation, may be able to provide some relief to this.”
Pilot design: Bringing ambient AI to 100 clinicians
The pilot involved 100 clinicians across multiple specialties and eight medical groups in Northern and Central California. Leaders intentionally recruited a diverse cohort, including primary care clinicians, various specialty clinicians and informatics champions who could model the technology for peers.
Survey findings following the pilot demonstrated significant improvements:
- The proportion of clinicians reporting they spent one hour or less each week on after-hours notes rose from 14 percent to 54 percent.
- The percentage who felt able to give patients their full attention increased from 58 percent to 93 percent.
- Burnout scores dropped from 42 percent to 35 percent.
Cheryl Stults, PhD, senior scientist at the Sutter Health Centre for Health Systems Research, described reductions in cognitive burden: “Regarding task load and cognitive burden, all three of the measures – difficulty accomplishing note writing performance, having to complete notes at a hurried and rush pace, and just the overall mental demand from these tasks – decreased statistically significantly from the pre to the post period.”
The AMA continues to lead efforts to reduce administrative strain through targeted support and system reforms to help clinicians rediscover a greater sense of professional fulfilment.
Early limitations: Integration and customisation gaps
Despite promising outcomes, clinicians identified several challenges during the pilot. These included limited EHR integration, reduced freedom to customise note formats and gaps in specialty-specific templates for physical examinations.
Stults noted: “Despite all of the benefits, there were also some challenges and limitations that they noted from their experience with AI. When our pilot was launched back in April 2024, at the time it was not fully integrated into the EHR. Physicians either had to copy and paste into the EHR or do an additional step to incorporate it into that.”
Since the pilot, full EHR integration has been implemented, resolving one of the most significant issues.
Clinicians also wanted greater flexibility in document structure. As Stults explained: “Additionally, physicians were unhappy that they were unable to customise or format the progress note for future ones, so if they like their note formatted a certain way, they would have to do it every single time – they wanted a way for the AI to remember or to have a level of permanent customisation.” The inclusion of clinicians from a wide range of specialties was intentional, helping ensure templates could be refined more effectively over time.
Participants also sought further functionalities, such as greater accuracy in direct dictation and more precise word-for-word transcription.
Despite these limitations, enthusiasm remained high. As one clinician commented, “I’m very committed to making this work and I really believe that AI will be the way we chart in the future.”
The AMA’s broader work in digital health includes the recent launch of the AMA Centre for Digital Health and AI, designed to ensure clinicians have a strong voice in shaping the use of AI technologies in patient care.
Scaling responsibly: Support over mandates
Following full integration into the EHR, Sutter Health transitioned from the pilot phase to systemwide expansion. Clinicians opted in using a simple self-service form, and most were able to implement the technology after completing two short e-learning modules.
Dr Jones explained: “Part of the uncertainty of knowing how this would go drove us towards a staged monthly implementation where we had our physicians indicate interest with subsequent onboarding. Once we had full EHR integration, we began a self-enrolment process, which was a really simple form. If anyone wants it, they go to our site, they sign up and within a month they will be provisioned.”
Training was streamlined as well. Early analysis suggested that more than two-thirds of clinicians felt confident going live without intensive support. As a result, Sutter Health created a self-guided e-learning module consisting of two seven-minute videos.
Clinical champions remained available to provide at-the-elbow guidance, while a digital academy support team carried out follow-up and troubleshooting.
The AMA’s STEPS Forward webinar, “AI Tools for Documentation: The Newest Member of the Care Team,” provides further insight into how ambient AI can support clinicians and improve care delivery.
Monitoring use and supporting adoption
Sutter Health monitors engagement through monthly utilisation reports. Dr Jones described the organisation’s proactive outreach strategy: “We run monthly reports looking at utilisation and have the team do targeted outreach to those who are not using it to say: Hey, can we help you? And if not, we actually go through a licence repurposing programme.”
This targeted support has helped increase adoption considerably. In March, Sutter Health also became the first organisation to launch a fully integrated inpatient workflow with its ambient AI vendor. This decision came only after the integrated tools demonstrated sufficient maturity to support hospital-based documentation.
As of September, the organisation has been extending the self-service enrolment model across hospitals and emergency departments (EDs).
The shift in clinician demand has been striking. As Dr Jones observed, the usual dynamic of “pushing” new technology has shifted towards clinicians actively requesting access: “The pull versus push has been incredible. In my career, this is one of the most exciting things to be a part of because physicians are pulling for it, and they want it. We have over 1.2 million notes written and that’s increasing at 50,000 a week.”
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