Longitudinal effects of ambient artificial intelligence scribe use on documentation burden and financial productivity in primary care: a quasi-experimental study
R. J. Waken, Sunny S. Lou, Mackenzie R. Hofford, Elise Eiden, Carrie Burk, Seunghwan Kim, Jared Esker, Linying Zhang, Thomas M. Maddox, Joanna Abraham +2 more · Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association · 18 Oct 2026
Where this sits in the debate
- Will AI actually boost productivity and growth? · its finding: it depends (why studies differ)
Direction of the finding as read from the abstract by an AI model (AI-written).
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: To investigate the longitudinal effects of an ambient artificial intelligence (AI) scribe use in primary care on outcomes related to documentation time, note writing patterns, and clinician financial productivity. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We conducted a quasi-experimental study with an interrupted time-series design to ascertain the effect of AI scribe use on note writing time, time outside of scheduled hours (TOSH), pajama time (5:30PM-7:00aM), note length, note closure <24 h, and work relative value units (wRVU). For each primary care clinician (physician, advanced practice provider), date of initial access was day 0; each measure was calculated for 150 days prior (pre-period) and after (post-period) day zero. RESULTS: Two hundred and twenty clinicians (mean age = 43.7, 70.9% females; 56.4% physicians) from 36 clinics, conducting 314 845 patient encounters were included. Compared to the pre-period, there was 7% decrease in note writing time at day 0 (incidence rate ratio [IRR] 0.93, 95% credible interval [CI] [0.89, 0.98]), increasing to 16% decrease by day 150 (IRR 0.84, 95% CI [0.82, 0.87]). There was no change in pajama time, TOSH, or wRVU at day 0; however, at day 150, there was a 19% decrease in pajama time (0.81, 95% CI [0.73, 0.90]), 13% decrease in TOSH (0.87, 95% CI [0.77, 0.98]), and a 2% increase in wRVU (1.02, 95% CI [1.01, 1.04]). At day 0, there was a 5% increase in note closures (1.05, 95% CI [1.02, 1.08]), with no difference to pre-period levels by day 150. There were no changes in note length at day 0 or day 150. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: There were persistent changes in AI scribe use measures over time as clinicians situated these tools within their workflows.
About this publication
Academic journal. Published in an academic journal — typically peer-reviewed before publication, though indexing alone doesn't guarantee review depth.
- Published
- 2026 (recently)
- Citations
- 0 (OpenAlex)
0 citations recorded by OpenAlex — too few 2026 papers in this collection for a fair comparison.
Related by theme, not necessarily by method or conclusion.
- Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality
SSRN · 2023 - Generative AI at Work
The Quarterly Journal of Economics · 2025 - The Impact of AI on Developer Productivity: Evidence from GitHub Copilot
arXiv · 2023 - The Productivity J-Curve: How Intangibles Complement General Purpose Technologies
American Economic Journal Macroeconomics · 2020
Overview assembled automatically from collected metadata. How this site is built.