The United States healthcare system has some big problems right now. One problem is not having enough staff. This happens because many workers are tired, leave their jobs, or are getting old. For example, nurses spend about five hours in a 12-hour shift doing paperwork instead of helping patients directly. This makes them feel stressed and can cause them to quit their jobs. Hospitals lose a lot of money every year because they have to hire and train new workers.
Administrative work is a big part of the problem. Studies show that 25% to 30% of U.S. healthcare money goes to these administrative costs. Medical workers spend twice as much time on paperwork as they do face-to-face with patients. Overall, healthcare workers spend about 18.5 million hours every year on extra paperwork, like documenting visits, dealing with insurance claims, scheduling patients, and answering phones. These tasks make healthcare workers tired and affect how well they can care for patients.
Ambient AI is a type of technology that listens to conversations between patients and doctors without getting in the way. It works like a “quiet helper” that takes notes automatically. This means doctors spend less time on paperwork and more time with patients.
One example is the partnership between HCA Healthcare and Commure. They use Ambient AI in 188 hospitals and about 2,400 care sites. This AI saves doctors around 90 minutes each day by writing down what happens in visits and putting it into Electronic Health Records (EHR) automatically. This helps doctors focus on their patients instead of paperwork.
This AI can understand over 60 languages and uses special templates for different medical fields. It also works with more than 60 EHR systems like MEDITECH Expanse Now. This makes the work faster because doctors have fewer clicks and less need to type information.
Ambient AI mostly helps with note-taking. But AI agents can do much more. For example, in 2025, Commure started using AI agents that can handle many tasks on their own. These include talking to patients, scheduling appointments, billing, managing referrals, planning discharges, and handling money matters.
Unlike AI assistants that need help from humans all the time, these AI agents work like autopilots. They can manage complicated tasks without needing someone to watch them constantly. This helps when there are not enough staff, because AI can do jobs that usually need people. This lets healthcare workers focus more on patient care.
The CEO of Commure, Tanay Tandon, said that AI agents reduce mistakes and help doctors work better. This means doctors can spend more good time with patients and less time on boring paperwork.
AI automation helps not just with notes but also with phone tasks and coordinating office work.
AI phone agents from companies like Simbo AI take over many patient calls. They schedule visits, check insurance, and answer common questions automatically. This reduces interruptions and lets staff spend time on more important patient needs. This is very helpful when there are not enough people working.
AI also works with EHR systems to update patient details, get insurance info from texts or images, and make data entry faster and more accurate. This prevents mistakes, speeds up patient check-ins, and follows rules like HIPAA.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) helps too. It automates tasks like billing, approving claims, and getting authorizations. Hospitals have saved over 106,000 minutes every day and millions of dollars each year by using these tools for managing money and scheduling.
AI working together with clinical operations helps make care smoother. For example, Qventus AI assistants helped a hospital lower patient stay times by managing surgery schedules better. This means safer care and less waiting for patients.
Staff shortages in healthcare make paperwork harder and add stress to workers. AI agents and Ambient AI help by taking over many tasks that use up doctor and nurse time.
By automating documentation and admin work, hospitals can keep up even with fewer staff. Research shows 63% of U.S. doctors feel burnt out because of too much paperwork. AI helps reduce this stress and keeps workers longer.
AI tools can work all day and night on tasks like answering calls and following up with patients. This means hospitals don’t need as many people for these jobs. For example, SimboConnect AI Phone Agents manage 70% of common calls, letting the front-office staff focus on more difficult tasks.
Also, by mid-2024, there are over 950 medical devices approved by the FDA that use AI or machine learning. The healthcare AI market is expected to grow more than 500% by 2030. This means AI will play a bigger role in healthcare jobs and help solve staff shortages even more.
Because of staff shortages and a lot of paperwork, healthcare providers in the U.S. are using Ambient AI and AI agents to help with their work. Ambient AI cuts down the time doctors spend on writing notes by capturing patient conversations automatically. AI agents handle many other office tasks by themselves.
These tools help improve note accuracy, reduce burnout, increase job satisfaction, make front office work easier, and save money. As technology improves, AI will keep helping healthcare providers give better care while keeping workloads manageable.
For medical practice managers, owners, and IT leaders, investing in Ambient AI and AI agents is important to run their clinics better and meet modern healthcare needs. As these tools become more common, they will play a bigger role in solving staff shortages and improving patient care in the United States.
The partnership aims to co-develop and deploy an ambient AI platform across HCA Healthcare’s network to streamline clinical documentation, enhance physician productivity, reduce burnout, and improve patient care by integrating AI directly into healthcare workflows.
Commure’s ambient AI captures patient-clinician conversations in real-time, automates documentation, reduces cognitive overload by saving providers up to 90 minutes daily, and supports natural, background note capture without disrupting the clinical encounter.
Unlike simple dictation, Commure’s ambient AI provides true ambient scribe technology with deep EHR integration, specialty-specific templates, multilingual support, and real-time structured documentation, creating a seamless provider experience and higher documentation accuracy.
Commure Agents are AI assistants that fully automate physician workflows independently, handling tasks like scheduling, patient engagement, billing, and care coordination. Unlike copilots, which require constant human input, Agents operate as autopilots running workflows in the background, reducing clicks and human intervention.
The platform supports emergency departments, hospitalist operations, ambulatory care, and integrates into mobile workflows such as MEDITECH Expanse Now. It enhances documentation in diverse care environments and assists revenue cycle management workflows.
Users report reduced provider documentation time, improved note accuracy, reduced cognitive burden, decreased denial rates in billing, enhanced clinician satisfaction, and significant alleviation of physician burnout.
Commure’s ambient AI links clinical notes directly to billing and revenue cycle processes, enabling automated coding, claims processing, and denial reduction, making documentation improvements translate into financial benefits for health systems.
Customization is critical, with advanced AI capabilities allowing specialty-specific templates, multilingual support (over 60 languages), and workflows tailored through direct collaboration with clinicians to fit specific healthcare system needs.
Commure integrates with over 60 EHR systems, enabling seamless data exchange, note generation, workflow automation, and embedding ambient AI within popular platforms like MEDITECH Expanse for enhanced clinical documentation.
Ambient AI and AI agents reduce administrative burdens, combat staffing shortages, and improve workflow efficiency, allowing healthcare professionals to focus more on direct patient care, thereby enhancing care quality while reducing burnout and operational costs.
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