Ambient Speech & EHR: KLAS Report Findings

Sidney Tate, research director, KLAS Research, writes that ambient speech technology is helping providers spend more time with patients and less time with keyboards.

As hospitals invest in digital tools to reduce burnout and improve clinician satisfaction, a new report from KLAS indicates providers using ambient speech technology report significantly better experiences with their EHRs.

The June 2025 report, Ambient Speech Outcomes 2025, presents findings from more than 900 ambulatory care providers—most using Epic—across 24 health systems. The results suggest that ambient documentation, when implemented thoughtfully, can reshape the EHR experience and support clinical well-being.

Clinicians using ambient speech tools, such as Microsoft DAX Copilot or Abridge, report notably higher Net EHR Experience Scores (NEES)—a composite metric based on efficiency, usability, and perceived value. The average NEES among ambient speech users reached 75.0, compared to 49.5 among non-users.

According to the report, providers cited major improvements in perceived efficiency, face-to-face patient interaction, and documentation quality. For one physician, the impact was transformative: “I went from feeling like a complete failure and being close to quitting medicine to now having a completely improved quality of life at work.”

Ambient speech uses generative AI to capture and draft clinical documentation from natural dialogue between clinicians and patients. While most early implementations focus on note-taking in family and internal medicine, providers expressed a desire to see the technology evolve to support other documentation tasks and clinical workflows.

Reductions in Burnout and After-Hours Work

Burnout remains a persistent challenge in healthcare, but the report said organizations using ambient speech tools observed meaningful wellness benefits. Providers who adopted ambient speech experienced a 12-percentage-point drop in self-reported burnout—compared to no measurable change among peers who did not adopt the technology.

Among the key improvements:

• An 11-point drop in the number of providers citing EHR inefficiency as a driver of burnout.
• A 12-point reduction in those citing after-hours documentation burden.
• A 9-point increase in the belief that their organization supports effective EHR use.

Even for clinicians still experiencing stress, ambient speech appeared to shift their view of the EHR as a contributing factor. In particular, some described a new ability to disconnect at the end of the workday, supporting better work-life balance.

Despite these gains, the majority of providers surveyed said they would prefer to reinvest saved time into patient care rather than increasing volume. Only 18% said they would consider seeing more patients to offset ambient speech costs.

Success Tied to Change Management, Not Just Technology

The report found that at least 75% of organizations saw improvements in NEES, efficiency, and burnout after implementing ambient speech, but success often depended on more than the tool itself.

“Providers typically find ambient speech solutions easy to use,” the report said. “Still, thoughtful change management during implementation is critical in maximizing the technology’s impact.”

One example cited is Legacy Health, which paired its ambient speech rollout with targeted provider selection, leadership engagement, and both in-person and on-demand training. Legacy also calculated return on investment as part of the process, helping to secure executive buy-in.

In addition, the report advised health systems to help clinicians personalize the tools, clarify expectations about AI accuracy, and support workflow integration. These steps are especially important for specialists, who often have unique documentation needs not yet fully addressed by current solutions.

Take it Away

• Use of ambient speech technology correlates with higher EHR satisfaction scores and reduced clinician burnout.
• Providers cite better efficiency, improved patient interaction, and more thorough notes as benefits.
• Change management—including provider selection, training, and expectation setting—plays a crucial role in successful adoption.
• Most clinicians prefer to invest time saved into improving care or regaining work-life balance rather than seeing more patients.
• Specialty and inpatient adoption remains limited, but vendors are actively developing more tailored functionality.

“Ambient speech has been the single best experience I have had documenting,” one physician said, encapsulating the report’s optimistic view on the future of AI-enabled documentation in clinical practice.