Authored by Chad Erickson, practice executive at MSA Dallas
In healthcare leadership, we often talk about “innovation,” but for me, the reality on the ground is usually about survival. Specifically, the survival of my providers’ time. As a primary care group, it is not one thing that threatens our group, but the death of a thousand cuts.
When I looked at our operations at MSA Dallas, I saw the same metric the AMA warns about playing out in our own clinic: for every hour my physicians spent in direct patient care, they were spending nearly two hours on administrative work. Some call it “pajama time,” but frankly, that term makes it sound too comfortable. It is time taken away from patient care and family, to do administrative work that often has little to do with taking care of patients.
In addition, “pajama time” is a massive cost. When digital charts first were mandated, I saw clinics see 3-5 fewer patients in day. It was threatening the stability of our practice, and it kept us from being able to help more patients. “AI” wasn’t a buzzword, it was a way to solve a specific operational deficit: my providers were drowning in chart notes, and they needed a lifeline.
Hiring more staff was off the table, I needed to empower my current staff with better tools and there was only one viable solution—it was to change the mechanism of documentation entirely. This is my perspective on shifting from manual entry to AI clinical documentation, and the impact I’ve witnessed firsthand.
The Economics: Scribes Were Not Enough
For years, the gold standard for reducing documentation burden was the human scribe. Strategically, I get it: they offload the clerical work. But when I looked at the economics and operations, the model didn’t scale.
Recruiting, training, and managing scribes is heavy lifting. Turnover is high. And I’ve seen it happen too many times—a scribe calls out sick, and suddenly the provider’s entire workflow collapses for the day.
When we analyzed the shift to medical documentation automation, specifically using Sunoh.ai, the numbers were undeniable. In our analysis, utilizing AI for documentation resulted in a 90% cost reduction compared to our previous documentation costs.
From my seat, that efficiency is the difference between offering a luxury perk to a few high-producing doctors and establishing a scalable standard of care for my entire organization. You can hear the full breakdown of our experience with Sunoh in this podcast episode.
The Workflow Shift: Listening, Not Typing
A major challenge with traditional EHR workflows is that they effectively require highly trained clinicians to function as data entry clerks. The learning curve is high. Replacement is painful when it needs to happen, and the impact is significant. I wanted to change the physical dynamic of the exam room using ambient documentation.
This technology isn’t just voice to text; it “listens” to the conversation, filters out the small talk, and structures the relevant medical data into a coherent SOAP draft note.
I’ve seen the impact on our daily operations personally. Our providers who have adopted it are saving, on average, one hour per day.
That is five hours a week. In terms of clinic capacity, that time is invaluable. But the retention ROI is what really matters to me. I’ll never forget one of my physicians—someone who used to stay late every night finishing charts—telling me that for the first time in years, he had the energy to go home and play his saxophone in the evenings.
It sounds like a small anecdote, but as a their executive, that is a win. A provider who has time for their life outside of medicine is a provider who stays with my practice.
The “First Minute” Rule
I also view this through a patient perception lens. Patients usually decide within the first minute of an appointment whether they trust a provider. If that minute is spent looking at a computer screen, trust erodes. I cannot overstate the value of building and maintaining trust in healthcare. It is critical to outcomes, essential for retention, and your best insulation to create a happy and healthy long-term relationship between your doctor and their patients. Eye contact builds trust, screen time takes away. Its that simple. My wife doesn’t think I am listening if I don’t make and keep eye contact. Why would patients be different.
Using AI in clinical documentation for medical offices, my providers can maintain eye contact. They are present and patients feel it. The technology runs in the background, capturing the data without interrupting the human connection.
Managing Expectations: The Importance of Calibration
I have to be honest with my team when we adopt new technology. There is often a fear that AI is a “black box,” or conversely, a hope that the results will be flawless instantly.
I told my providers upfront: there is a learning curve. It took about seven weeks for the system to fully adapt to our specific workflows and for our providers to trust the AI-generated draft doctors note. The system learns from the edits providers make, getting smarter and more accurate over time.
This period of calibration was worth it because it gave us consistency. With over a dozen providers, variability in documentation is a risk I want to avoid. AI helps standardize how notes are captured and formatted, ensuring our chart notes meet a consistent quality standard across the board. That reliability is fundamental to how Sunoh works in a real-world clinical setting.
The Strategic Imperative
Here is the new reality: “The good news is, AI isn’t going to take your job. The bad news is, someone who knows how to use AI is going to take your job.” It is the truth.
We are moving past the experimental phase of this technology. The tools available today—like Sunoh.ai—are robust enough to handle complex medical environments.
For leaders in my position, the question is no longer “should we automate?” The question is “how long can we afford not to?”
Reducing the documentation burden isn’t just about making doctors happier—though it is important. It is about building a practice that is efficient and effective enough to survive in a landscape of shrinking reimbursements and rising costs.
If you are still debating whether to move away from the keyboard, look at your after-hours logs. The answer is likely already there, and with the cost to try it so reasonable, why wouldn’t you at least try?
