What You Should Know:
– A new impact report from the KLAS Arch Collaborative, titled “Ambient Speech Outcomes 2025,” reveals that ambient speech solutions are significantly improving the Electronic Health Record (EHR) experience and actively combating provider burnout. The study, which analyzed data from over 900 physicians and advanced practice providers, highlights the technology’s potential to bring focus back to patient care and enhance overall clinician well-being.
– Ambient speech, a high-energy technology spurred by generative AI advancements, has rapidly expanded over the last year, with many organizations piloting solutions.
– The KLAS report, drawing data from ambulatory care providers at 24 healthcare organizations using Epic EHRs and various ambient speech vendors (including Microsoft DAX Copilot, Abridge, Ambience Healthcare, DeepScribe, and Nabla), provides a holistic look at its impact.
Elevating the EHR Experience
Providers who utilize ambient speech for a significant portion of their documentation are notably more satisfied with their EHR experience compared to their peers. Data from providers whose EHR experience was measured both before and after adopting ambient speech shows significant positive impacts across key metrics:
- EHR Usability: The percentage of providers agreeing the EHR is “easy to learn” increased by 12 points for ambient speech adopters, compared to a 4-point increase for non-adopters.
- Perceived Efficiency: Agreement that the EHR “enables efficiency” saw a 13-point increase for adopters, versus a 6-point increase for non-adopters.
- Patient-Centered Care: The percentage of providers agreeing the EHR “enables patient-centered care” also rose by 13 points for adopters, compared to a 6-point increase for non-adopters.
- Functionality and Response Time: Adopters also saw a 10-point increase in agreement that the EHR has “needed functionality” and a 13-point increase in “fast system response time.”
Clinicians particularly value that ambient speech allows them to engage more with patients face-to-face, freeing them from the cognitive burden of note-taking during visits or recalling information later for documentation. This not only reduces charting time, allowing more focus on patient care activities like education and messaging, but also leads to more thorough notes and better follow-through on patient discussions and orders, ultimately resulting in higher provider satisfaction with the quality of care delivered.
Alleviating Provider Burnout
Ambient speech is also proving to be a powerful tool in alleviating burnout for providers struggling with documentation, workload, and work-life balance.
- Reduced Burnout: There was a 10 percentage-point reduction in burnout among providers who adopted ambient speech, with no comparable change for peers who did not adopt it.
- Decreased After-Hours Workload: Ambient speech adopters saw a 12 percentage-point reduction in the number of providers citing after-hours workload as a contributor to burnout.
- EHR Inefficiency as a Burnout Factor: There was an 11 percentage-point reduction in providers citing EHR inefficiency as a contributor to burnout.
- Organizational Support: Providers who adopted ambient speech showed a 9 percentage-point increase in agreement that their organization supports the EHR well, representing a 2.3 times higher improvement compared to non-adopters.
While burnout is multifactorial, ambient speech, when well-implemented and supported, can significantly improve providers’ lives. Physicians report feeling like “a complete failure and being close to quitting medicine” before adopting ambient speech, only to experience “a completely improved quality of life at work” afterward. Many express gratitude for gaining work-life balance, allowing them to “disconnect and focus on [their] young, growing family.” Research suggests that reducing physician burnout can yield significant financial benefits, estimated at roughly $87,000 per physician in terms of reduced turnover and lost productivity.
Patient Volume: A Nuanced Discussion
While ambient speech offers efficiency gains, most providers prefer to invest this newfound time in improving patient care activities or their work-life balance, rather than adding more patients. A survey of providers who adopted ambient speech found that over 80% were not interested in adding more patients. However, nearly 1 in 5 providers did express some interest, especially if it could help justify the technology’s investment or if they weren’t already short-staffed. Advanced practice providers were more likely to express this willingness than physicians.
Consistent Positive Outcomes and Future Development
The study consistently shows positive outcomes from ambient speech across organizations. At least 75% of organizations that surveyed providers before and after adoption saw improvements in their Net EHR Experience Score (NEES), higher perceived efficiency, and decreased burnout.
Looking ahead, providers are optimistic about ambient speech’s future, but they also see opportunities for improvement and expansion.
- Refinement of Output: Providers desire continued fine-tuning to decrease the need for editing, addressing issues like inaccurate or clunky output, missing critical information, irrelevant details, incorrect pronoun labeling, or misunderstanding accents.
- Personalization: Clinicians want the tools to adapt to their individual voice and documentation style, learning from previous notes and integrating better with EHR personalizations like templates.
- Expanded Capabilities Beyond the Note: Providers see significant potential for ambient speech to extend beyond capturing history of present illness (HPI) to include assessment and planning, risk assessments, orders, coding, and billing, which could positively impact downstream revenue.
- Specialty and Inpatient Functionality: While generalist providers in ambulatory settings have been the first adopters, there’s a growing need for more specialized functionality for complex specialty care, as well as adaptation for inpatient providers, nurses, and allied health professionals.
