Less time finishing notes can mean more time with patients and fewer hours of work following clinicians home.
Joshua Haggan used to spend six to eight hours every weekend finishing documentation. For the Ivy Health area director and father of three young daughters, those hours came out of time with his family.
Today, he says weekend documentation rarely takes more than 30 minutes. Since using AI scribe technology, he has more quality time with his daughters. In his words, it has “legitimately changed my life.”
Ivy Health began implementing an AI-assisted documentation tool in 2025 to help clinicians spend less time completing notes. Joshua’s experience shows what that change can mean once the workday is over.
A familiar challenge in rehabilitation
Documentation is an essential part of care. It also takes time that can be difficult to find between appointments, leaving clinicians catching up after their last patient leaves or taking that work home.
A 2024 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association explored that tension through focus groups with 13 outpatient rehabilitation therapists at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS), a clinical partner of Ivy Health. Participants described documentation interfering with clinical care and work-life balance. Researchers recommended several approaches, including improvements to electronic health records, tools that make documentation easier, and support from leaders.
At Ivy Health, reducing that burden means paying attention to how clinicians spend their time and where additional support could make a difference. AI scribe technology is one way the organization is working to help.
More time during the patient day
Amanda Perry, a clinic director at Ivy Health, was initially skeptical. After 15 years as a physical therapist, she felt she was already efficient with documentation.
After using the AI scribe, she was surprised by the accuracy, detail, and amount of time it saved. She described having more time for hands-on care during a patient’s first visit, helping someone get another appointment scheduled, and making sure they left with their home exercise program.
Amanda also reported spending less time catching up on documentation outside work, leaving more time with her family.
Putting AI to work responsibly
As AI-assisted documentation becomes more common, saving time is only part of the responsibility. The American Physical Therapy Association’s 2025 practice advisory on AI-enabled ambient scribes addresses documentation responsibilities, privacy, safety, and regulatory considerations, along with the technology’s benefits and limitations.
Ivy Health’s approach starts with the people delivering and receiving care. AI should support clinicians’ expertise and give them more time and attention for their patients. An AI committee oversees responsible use across the organization, including compliance with applicable requirements, to help guide how these tools become part of everyday work.
Today, nearly 80% of Ivy Health’s eligible clinicians are using AI scribe technology, with more than 150,000 patient visits documented through the platform. Ivy Health is also seeing a modest improvement in same-day note completion.
These early results are encouraging, and research elsewhere in healthcare offers additional perspective. A 2025 study published in JAMA Network Open followed 46 physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants across 17 medical specialties. In that study, use of an ambient AI scribe was associated with about 20% less time writing notes per appointment and 30% less after-hours work in the electronic health record. While the study examined a different tool and care setting, it points to the potential for documentation support to make a difference beyond the patient day.
For Ivy Health, giving clinicians time back is part of supporting the people patients count on. That means making room for the attention a patient needs during a visit and protecting more of the time clinicians need for their own lives. For Joshua, it means fewer hours finishing notes on the weekend and more time with his young daughters.
Ivy Health CEO Jason Strauss shares the leadership thinking behind that work in “What Should AI Give Back to Healthcare?” Read his article on LinkedIn.