Ambient artificial intelligence (AI) technology is becoming important in healthcare in the United States. It is used mainly in physician workflows, prior authorization, and referral management. Medical practices face challenges like workforce shortages, too much paperwork, and increasing costs. Ambient AI helps by making difficult tasks easier. These AI systems work quietly inside electronic health records (EHR) to reduce the workload of doctors and staff and make things run more smoothly.
This article is for medical practice administrators, practice owners, and IT managers in the United States. It will explain how ambient AI is changing healthcare workflows. The focus will be on automation trends in physician productivity, prior authorization, and referral management. Examples and numbers will show the improvements already happening in clinics.
Doctors in the U.S. spend almost half their working hours on paperwork like writing notes and entering data into EHRs instead of seeing patients. This causes burnout and lowers job happiness. Ambient AI scribes and agents are new tools that help by doing routine documentation, summarizing patient visits, and letting doctors spend more time with patients.
An example is The Permanente Medical Group (TPMG), which started using ambient AI scribes in late 2023. Over 63 weeks, they saved about 15,791 hours of doctor documentation time. This is nearly 1,800 full workdays. The AI scribes wrote down patient visits in real time and made summaries, which greatly cut down after-hours work called “pajama time”—when doctors finish charts outside office hours.
Doctors said 84% noticed better communication with patients after using AI scribes, and 82% were happier with their jobs. Patients saw that almost half of their doctors looked at computer screens less during visits, which made the visits better. These results are important for practice leaders who want to help doctors feel better and keep them working.
The data from TPMG showed that doctors who used AI scribes more often saved more than twice the time of those who used them less. This means regularly using ambient AI makes work more efficient. Healthcare groups are encouraged to fully adopt and use these AI tools.
Prior authorization is one of the slowest and most difficult tasks in managing medical practices. It often requires back-and-forth talks between providers and insurers, checking clinical details, and tracking approvals. This slows down patient care and raises costs.
AI agents made for prior authorization read clinical notes and triggers in the EHR to start approval requests. They can handle approvals, denials, and follow-ups on their own. This reduces mistakes in data entry and cuts down manual work.
For example, Commure has AI agents fully built into clinical work and EHR systems. These agents handle prior authorizations by working directly with patient records and voice commands. After a doctor finishes an AI-generated clinical note, the system can send out authorization requests, watch for responses, and alert staff if there are problems. This cuts delays and fewer denials happen because of missing or wrong information.
Commure CEO Tanay Tandon says AI agents speed up prior authorizations and reduce errors in billing. This can help medical practices manage money better. The automation allows administrative staff to focus more on helping patients than on paperwork.
Referral management is another hard administrative job. It includes scheduling visits, sending records between providers, and tracking if referrals are done. Poor referral management can cause lost referrals, delays in care, and bad communication.
Ambient AI agents help manage referrals by automating patient contact and appointment scheduling, confirming follow-ups, and coordinating communications. These systems use voice commands and connect with EHRs to find out when referrals are needed based on patient data.
Practices using this AI say care coordination and efficiency improved. For example, after a specialist visit is suggested, AI agents can contact patients by voice or digital messages. They make sure patients understand how to prepare, schedule the visit, and remind them about the appointment.
This automation supports better patient involvement and lowers no-show rates, which is a big issue for administrators. Studies show AI scheduling tools have reduced no-shows by 30% and cut scheduling time by 60% at healthcare centers.
Revenue cycle management includes front-desk and back-office tasks like billing, coding, submitting claims, and collecting payments. Mistakes in claims or delays cause denials, which hurt cash flow and add workload.
AI agents such as those from Commure focus on RCM by using ambient AI to watch claims, find errors before sending them, and fix issues that cause denials. They also handle patient billing questions, explain benefits, and interact with payers for prior authorizations. All this happens within the clinical workflow.
Using AI in RCM lowers denial rates and speeds up the process, helping healthcare providers financially. These agents also make billing staff work easier and reduce mistakes, improving how things run.
Aside from paperwork, ambient AI agents are beginning to automate more difficult clinical tasks like planning for surgery, discharge processes, and follow-up care. They interact with doctors and patients using voice technology and use EHR data to make sure all steps happen smoothly.
For example, if a doctor recommends a colonoscopy using AI-assisted notes, the system can manage the patient’s preparation instructions, schedule the test, and check if patients follow instructions. Usually, many staff are needed for these tasks, but AI can handle much of it on its own, cutting delays and errors.
As AI improves, these agents will work more independently, needing less supervision. This will reduce manual work and mistakes even more.
Using AI to automate healthcare tasks needs careful planning to fit with existing health IT systems and what the operation needs. Integration with big EHR platforms like Epic, which includes Commure’s AI agents, helps put AI smoothly into doctors’ daily work and encourages use.
Healthcare groups face challenges such as keeping data private, making technology work together, and staff being slow to change. Making sure AI follows HIPAA rules, having business agreements in place, and doing audits are important to protect patient data when using AI.
Good change management includes training staff well, clearly explaining how AI works, and giving ongoing help. It is also important to address worries about editing AI notes or not having templates work well to keep using AI long-term.
AI brings big economic benefits by automating tasks. About 30% of the U.S. healthcare budget goes to administrative work, and doctors and staff spend much time managing EHRs.
AI is expected to save the American healthcare system up to $360 billion each year by doing routine tasks. Hospitals have lowered costs by 20–30% and cut cycle times by up to 50% with AI automation. Coding staff productivity has also gone up, with Auburn Community Hospital reporting a 40% increase after using AI.
These savings are important because of expected staffing shortages. For example, there will be about 350,540 unfilled nurse jobs by 2026, a 10% shortfall. AI can help by improving scheduling, lowering staff burden, and using resources better.
Right now, less than 20% of doctors use ambient AI, so there is room to grow. Companies like Commure are working to add more AI agent features for intake, referrals, prior authorizations, and denials.
The goal is to make AI agents more independent, easier to customize, and better matched to what organizations need. Onsite engineering partnerships help healthcare systems quickly adjust AI workflows and speed up the use of AI.
By focusing on reducing doctor paperwork, making front-office tasks easier, and improving revenue cycle management, ambient AI may become a common tool in U.S. medical practices.
For healthcare leaders in the U.S., ambient AI technology offers solutions to cut administrative work, improve doctor satisfaction, and make clinical operations run better. AI scribes and autonomous agents that connect with current EHR systems show how AI can refocus care on patients while lowering mistakes and helping with finances.
Using AI tools for prior authorization, referral management, and documentation helps reduce the workload for staff and clinicians. These tools lead to faster work, fewer denials, and better patient engagement.
Ongoing development of ambient AI agents, along with custom setups and training, gives practices the chance to make operations more efficient and get ready for future staffing challenges.
This changing technology scene points to a future where AI helps healthcare workers give timely, accurate, and patient-focused care through smart automation built into everyday clinical work.
Commure’s AI agents automate complex healthcare tasks such as front-office functions, patient navigation, care management, revenue cycle management, appointment scheduling, patient outreach, billing, prior authorizations, and referral management, fully integrated within the electronic health record (EHR) and clinical workflows.
Commure Agents are embedded into the entire clinical workflow and interact directly with the EHR, enabling automation of tasks after patient visits, such as documentation, scheduling, follow-ups, and care coordination, facilitating seamless information extraction and action based on clinical context.
AI agents improve efficiency by automating appointment scheduling, patient outreach, and follow-ups, reducing administrative burden and human error. They enhance patient engagement through interactive communication, optimize preoperative and discharge planning, and allow clinicians to focus more on patient care.
The agents streamline claims processing, reduce denial rates by correcting errors proactively, handle prior authorizations triggered from clinical notes, and manage billing communication such as explaining EOBs, all leading to faster revenue cycles and reduced administrative overhead.
For instance, after a physician’s consultation using ambient AI scribe, the agent can schedule necessary patient procedures like colonoscopy, manage the associated preparation regimen, interact with the EMR, and communicate directly with the patient to ensure compliance and follow-up care.
Unlike AI copilots requiring constant human prompting, Commure Agents function as autopilots running healthcare workflows independently in the background, reducing clicks and human intervention, thus delivering true automation that improves clinician satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Besides offering pre-built modules, Commure provides on-site engineering collaboration to tailor or create new AI workflows specific to individual health systems’ needs, supporting co-development and rapid deployment within existing infrastructure.
Commure views the EMR and the CFO’s office (revenue cycle) as central hubs; embedding AI agents into these platforms accelerates deployment, embeds features seamlessly within core systems, and maximizes adoption and impact across clinical and administrative domains.
Health systems using Commure Agents have reported improvements in clinician satisfaction, faster clinical documentation, enhanced operational efficiency, reduced billing errors, and streamlined patient scheduling and follow-up management.
Commure aims to expand its AI agent stack to cover more modules such as physician productivity, intake, referrals, prior authorizations, and denials, focusing on easy and fast deployment, enhanced ambient AI adoption, and continuously innovating with infinite applications in healthcare workflows.
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