Reducing administrative burdens that add hours onto the workday are the biggest hope that physicians have for how augmented intelligence (AI)—often referred to as artificial intelligence—can change their workplace for the better.
Among physicians who participated in a recent AMA survey, 57% said that addressing administrative burdens through automation remains the biggest area of opportunity for AI to address key needs as workforce shortages continue to increase and as physician burnout continues to be a key concern. Augmented physician capacity, which 18% of those surveyed said was the biggest area of opportunity, came in a distant second among those surveyed.
The AMA survey (PDF) examines changes in physician sentiment toward health care AI from August 2023 to November 2024 and offers insight into physicians’ evolving perspectives on adopting and using health AI. Researchers surveyed nearly 1,200 physicians, including primary care physicians and an array of specialists, as well as a mix of physicians practicing across different settings.
Overall, 35% of physicians reported that their enthusiasm for health AI exceeded their concerns, up from 30% who felt that way a year earlier.
From AI implementation to EHR adoption and usability, the AMA is fighting to make technology work for physicians, ensuring that it is an asset to doctors—not a burden.
Where physicians want help
When physicians think about how AI tools could be used in beneficial ways, many think that automation can be helpful in ways that could ease factors contributing to the high burnout rate that has plagued the profession as documentation demands and other non-patient facing expectations have been put on physicians.
When surveyed, physicians were asked how they anticipated tools using AI would impact a host of different factors. There were three areas that saw big gains between the 2023 and 2024 surveys and they had to do with burden and efficiency. Here is the share of physicians who said an AI tool would be somewhat or very helpful for a given factor in each year:
- Work efficiency: 75% said they believed AI could help in this area, up from 69% who believed that in 2023.
- Stress and burnout: 54% said they believed AI could help with this challenge, up from 44% in 2023.
- Cognitive overload: 48% said AI could provide benefits in this space, up from 40% in 2023.
A number of factors remained relatively unchanged over the past year, but more than half of physicians surveyed believed AI tools could be somewhat or very helpful with diagnostic ability (72%); clinical outcomes (62%); care coordination (59%); patient convenience (57%); patient safety (56%); resource allocation of staff (56%); and revenue (54%).
Meanwhile, physicians—regardless of whether they use AI tools or [JM1] are even familiar with a given AI use case—said AI’s most relevant uses had to do with using the technology to help them with documentation. Here are AI uses followed by the share of physicians surveyed who said the uses would be relevant to their practice:
- Billing codes, medical charts or visit notes: 80%.
- Creation of discharge instructions, care plans and/or progress notes: 72%.
- Generation of draft responses to patient portal messages: 57%.
Among other areas where physicians felt AI could help included automation of insurance prior authorization (71%); translation services (69%); generation of chart summaries (69%); and summaries of medical research and standards of care (65%).
Health systems use AI to cut burdens
Some members of the AMA Health System Program, which provides enterprise solutions to equip leadership, physicians and care teams with resources to help drive the future of medicine, are already incorporating AI in ways that are helping slash physicians’ administrative burdens physicians.
Streamlining processes and optimize workflows
- At Geisinger Health System, there have been more than 110 live automations across the system, including admission notifications and appointment cancellations. The automation in turn has allowed physicians and care teams to reclaim valuable hours during the day that they are able to spend with patients.
Helping physicians and care teams with message analysis
- At Ochsner Health in New Orleans, AI is helping scan emails and calling attention to important information in communications. For example, AI can flag vital pieces of information that may be buried in the middle of long messages from patients.
Cutting physicians’ documentation time at work
- Most physicians at The Permanente Medical Group who have used ambient AI scribes are saving an average of about an hour a day at the keyboard. The AI tool involves using a microphone on a secure smartphone that allows the ambient AI scribe to transcribe—not record—patient encounters. Machine learning and natural-language processing is then used to summarize the conversation’s clinical content and produce a note documenting the visit, saving physicians up to an hour at keyboard each day.
Boosting physician job satisfaction
- Ambient AI scribes also are helping physicians at the physician-owned and -governed Hattiesburg Clinic in Mississippi. Physicians there were given the choice of whether or not they wanted to individually adopt the technology in their exam room.
- During a pilot period where they tested a product from one vendor and then tested a product from a second vendor, the technology had generally meant less stress for physicians when it comes to documentation and less “pajama time,” time spent on documentation after work. Job satisfaction received a 17% boost when using the first vendor and 13% when using the second.
In addition to fighting on the legislative front to help ensure that technology is an asset to physicians and not a burden, the AMA has developed advocacy principles (PDF) that address the development, deployment and use of health care AI, with particular emphasis on:
- Health care AI oversight.
- When and what to disclose to advance AI transparency.
- Generative AI policies and governance.
- Physician liability for use of AI-enabled technologies.
- AI data privacy and cybersecurity.
- Payer use of AI and automated decision-making systems.
Learn with the AMA about the emerging landscape of augmented intelligence in health care (PDF).
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