Abstract
This pilot study aimed to evaluate the impact of an ambient listening AI tool, DAX CoPilot (DAX), on clinical documentation efficiency among primary care providers in a community-based setting.We conducted a randomized controlled trial among volunteer clinicians (physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants in family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, and urgent care), who were asked to use DAX with a standardized note template (n = 25) or to continue with traditional documentation methods (n = 20) over a 3-month intervention period. We evaluated documentation efficiency with both standard and custom Epic metrics to evaluate the impact on all visit types as well as specifically problem-focused visits.Because of heterogeneity in DAX usage, we created post hoc categories of low (<45% of all visits, n = 12), moderate (45-69.9% of all visits, n = 6), and high-frequency (≥ 70% of all visits, n = 7) DAX users. We observed the largest differences among high-frequency DAX users. For problem-focused visits with clinicians in this group, a median of 50% of note characters were written by DAX, and we observed a 1.4-minute decrease in time spent on notes per visit (p-value: 0.38) and a 35% decrease in the median number of characters per note (p-value: 0.38) from baseline to the end of the study period. The control group metrics were largely unchanged throughout the study.Our findings suggest that DAX can improve documentation efficiency, particularly among clinicians who use it frequently. Healthcare systems might benefit by using AL-AI tools like DAX but should consider implementation scope and note template features. Future investigations are needed to further explore these trends and their additional implications for outcomes such as burnout.