Healthcare / Health system
Ardent Health: Automatic clinical documentation during outpatient visits
- Company
- Ardent Health
- Country
- United States
- Adoption stage
- In operation
- Source published
- Date basis
- The date the source was published. It can differ from the date adoption started.
- How the source was checked
- Read the full source text
The work problem
According to a press release Ardent Health published on July 23, 2026, documentation demands remain one of the leading contributors to administrative burden and burnout for physicians and advanced practice providers. Ardent Health delivers care across six U.S. states through subsidiaries that include 30 acute care hospitals and more than 280 sites of care, with over 2,000 employed and affiliated providers. The company sought to reduce the time clinicians spend typing notes, completing charts and working after hours, so as to reduce burnout and improve both the provider experience and patient care.
Technology and data
Ardent Health uses Ambience Healthcare's ambient AI platform. The technology automatically generates clinical documentation during visits, reducing the time clinicians spend typing notes themselves. Ardent announced its enterprise-wide deployment of Ambience in September 2025, and since then physicians and advanced practice providers across specialties in its ambulatory network have used the platform in their visits. Brad Hoyt, MD, chief medical information officer, said clinicians have embraced the technology as a way to spend less time documenting and more time connecting with patients.
Results
According to the press release, Ardent-affiliated clinicians who use Ambience use the technology in 87% of ambulatory encounters across specialties, well above industry benchmarks of roughly 40% to 45% reported in peer-reviewed and independent studies. According to EHR data, providers save an average of more than 3 hours per week in documentation time. The platform has supported more than 1 million patient encounters, and since the enterprise-wide deployment was announced in September 2025 it has supported more than 418,000 unique patients across the ambulatory network. Jennie Zheng, MD, a family medicine physician with UT Health East Texas who completed the one-millionth encounter, uses the technology in 83% of her encounters and has reduced her EHR documentation time by 53%, from 135 minutes to 64 minutes per 8 hours of appointments.
Limits and open questions
The press release does not disclose how clinicians review and correct the AI-generated documentation, its accuracy, or its effect on patient outcomes. The 87% applies to ambulatory encounters of clinicians who use Ambience, and the change from 135 minutes to 64 minutes is the result of one physician.
Sources
- Ardent Health Surpasses 1 Million Patient Encounters Supported by Ambient AIardenthealth.com, Accessed
Compiled from public sources. These are not results from ATF Works customers.