Only 16% of Academic General Surgery Clinicians Used AI Scribes
Ambient AI scribes listen to a clinic visit and write the note, so clinicians spend less time typing.
Documentation burden is the problem these tools are built to reduce.
A study published on 26 October 2026 in npj Digital Medicine tracked who actually used them once a large health system switched them on.
The Study in Brief
Johns Hopkins researchers followed 2901 ambulatory clinicians from December 2024 to May 2025.
A clinician counted as an adopter after using the scribe even once.
Uptake meant the share of eligible visits where the scribe was used each month.
Surgery Sits Near the Bottom
Community general pediatrics led at 69%, followed by community internal medicine at 67%.
Academic neurology reached 53%.
Academic general surgery came in at just 16%.
Obstetrics and gynecology followed at 18%, and psychiatry at 19%.
That is more than four times fewer adopters than community pediatrics.
Trying It Is Not the Same as Keeping It
Some groups went all in, with community attending physicians and advanced practice providers reaching roughly 80% to 90% median visit-level uptake in some groups by May 2025.
The authors found four patterns over time: slow and steady adoption, early use followed by dropping it, brief transient use, and late adoption.
A low adoption number can therefore include clinicians who tried the tool and walked away.
What Surgical Teams Can Take From This
The authors conclude that rollout support should fit each practice setting instead of following one plan for the whole system.
A surgical clinic mixes consults, postoperative checks, and operative planning, so a rollout designed around primary care visits may miss the mark.
The study does not test why surgery lagged, so that explanation remains a hypothesis.
The practical move is to track usage by specialty, because a system-wide average would have hidden this gap.
Evidence on the next wave of surgical AI tools is tracked in The 2026 Surgical Technology Intelligence Report.
Sources
Azad TD, Warman A, Tantry D, et al. Systemwide adoption patterns of ambient AI scribe technology in an integrated academic health system. npj Digital Medicine, 2026. doi.org/10.1038/s41746-026-03326-6
