Cleveland Clinic hits 3.5M AI scribe encounters in 12 months

Cleveland Clinic's AI scribe deployment reaches scale

Cleveland Clinic Foundation has documented more than 3.5 million patient encounters using AI scribes in the 12 months following its March 2025 rollout, according to a new report published in Nature. The deployment reached 4,800 ambulatory care clinicians across the health system's 23 hospitals and 276 outpatient locations.

The academic medical center partnered with Ambience Healthcare to deploy the ambient documentation tool to 4,000 clinicians in just four months. Researchers attribute the rapid adoption to deliberate governance structures and support systems designed to overcome common barriers like workflow integration issues and clinician skepticism, as first reported by Healthcare IT News.

Why it matters

Healthcare organizations face a projected shortage of up to 86,000 physicians by 2036, according to AMN Healthcare data cited in the report. AI documentation tools promise to reduce administrative burden and clinician burnout, but deployment success varies widely. Cleveland Clinic's structured approach demonstrates that governance and responsive support — not just technology selection — determine whether AI tools deliver measurable workforce retention benefits at enterprise scale.

Governance structure drove adoption

Cleveland Clinic established a Project Operating Council to oversee daily rollout management and coordinate cross-functional stakeholders. Council subgroups handled specific tasks including IT troubleshooting, clinician training, product feedback review, and utilization monitoring.

The support infrastructure fielded more than 900 clinician inquiries during rollout with an average response time of two minutes. Ambience Healthcare staffed 24/7 live mobile chat with human support personnel and hosted live virtual training sessions three times daily.

The most common support requests involved custom physical exam templates, multi-clinician workflow configurations, draft corrections, and access to AI scribe policies.

Feedback loops shaped deployment

A provider advisory group collected specialty-specific feedback on content, formatting, and features. The operating council used this input to expand in-person training sessions, allocate time at departmental meetings, and add asynchronous training options for specialties with challenging clinical schedules.

Department chairs received dedicated dashboards showing their departments' training and onboarding progress. Researchers found that empowering chairs with iterative outreach messaging reduced their administrative load while driving adoption.

Utilization as the critical metric

The Cleveland Clinic team emphasized encounter-level utilization — whether clinicians use the AI scribe during eligible patient visits — as more meaningful than simple user adoption metrics. This measure directly ties to realizing value at scale, researchers noted.

Sixty percent of users agree or strongly agree that the ambient AI tool has increased their likelihood to remain in practice, according to the report.

The deployment addressed known utilization barriers including resistance to change, workflow heterogeneity, limited awareness, and AI model limitations for complex specialty cases.

Broader workforce context

The physician shortage will persist through 2036, with primary care and specialty roles most affected, according to AMN Healthcare research examining five years of provider search data and federal labor statistics. Rural facilities face particular challenges, with urban registered nurse fill rates nearly three times higher than rural rates in 2024.

While nurse demand has decreased from pandemic peaks, filled positions for the top five RN specialties dropped nearly 7% from 2021 to 2025.

AMN Healthcare president and CEO Cary Grace said organizations best positioned for future care delivery will use predictive planning, data analytics, and workforce optimization strategies to build engaged, cost-effective teams.

Details of the Cleveland Clinic deployment and outcomes were first reported by Healthcare IT News.