2026 COA Annual Meeting: Evaluating the Impact of AI Scribes on Clinical Workflow and Documentation Quality

304 patients were randomized to either conventional documentation methods, including surgeon dictation transcribed by secretaries or preconstructed templates or artificial intelligence (AI) assisted documentation using an AI scribe. The outcomes of interest were physician and administrative processing times, documentation quality, spelling and grammatical errors, medical errors, and patient perceptions of AI scribe use. Outcomes were assessed throughout the clinical documentation process, from consultation completion to final administrative processing. Overall, the results of the study revealed that AI scribes significantly reduced physician and administrative workload while producing consultation letters that were more complete, professional, and clear. Importantly, AI scribes did not increase medical errors or negatively affect patient experience. These findings suggest that AI scribes can improve clinical efficiency while maintaining documentation quality and patient safety.