Customer Stories
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John Muir Health

Transforming patient care at John Muir Health with ambient AI: Boosting patient face-time by 20% and cutting charting time by 24%

Health system at a glance

John Muir Health is a nationally recognized, not-for-profit health system east of San Francisco serving patients in Contra Costa, Alameda and southern Solano Counties.

HQ

Walnut Creek, California

Affiliated providers

1,150

Facilities

86

Priti Patel, MD, CMIO

Chief Medical Information Officer

John Muir Health (JMH) faced a critical challenge: clinicians spent a significant amount of time documenting, and the strain was palpable.

Recognizing the need for a solution, the leadership team set out to find an AI scribing solution that could address the diverse documentation needs across various care settings and specialties.

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After rigorously vetting multiple solutions, JMH selected Ambience. In addition to the Epic integration, Ambience stood out for its ability to accommodate JMH’s specialty specific needs, while offering customizable note configurations (such as bulleted or narrative formats) tailored to each clinician’s style and preferences. JMH and Ambience also collaborated closely to train front-desk staff and streamline change management, particularly in the ED, where implementing consent workflows presented unique challenges. The financial ROI was clear, too: point-of-care CDI and coding improvements generated enough ROI to justify implementation (without having to ask providers to see more patients).

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Ambience has been the most transformative thing we’ve done at John Muir Health. When we were looking at different vendors, we wanted to see which of them produced the best note. Documentation needs really vary depending on the setting…and even within the ambulatory specialty, it’s very different what a primary care physician needs versus what a specialist needs.

Priti Patel, MD, CMIO

Chief Medical Information Officer

Impact

Decreased Burnout & Time Savings

2 hrs
Perceived time savings
11%
Decrease in clinician burnout
24%
Average decrease in charting time

Improved Patient Experience

20%
Average increase in patient face-time

Positive Clinician Feedback

91%
Of clinicians would feel disappointed without it
86%
Of clinicians feel like Ambience increases efficiency

I frequently have a feeling it’s magic. Ambience understands cardiology. It understands arrhythmia, it understands cardiomyopathy–if I say CABG, it knows what a CABG is. The common abbreviations that we use in cardiology, it knows those things and where they fit in. We have a lot of drugs that have awkward names. It knows them. It allows me to listen to the patient, and I don’t have to worry if I’m missing anything for the note. The notes that Ambience generates help with compliance for documentation and making sure that you document the different areas that are required to support the billing. I don’t document at home. I am done with my notes when I leave the office.

Christopher Wulff, MD

Cardiology

The burden produced by documentation is gone, it’s evaporated. The unique aspects of urology that need to be reflected include procedures, kidney stones, multiple cancers, and more. So being able to accurately document those procedures is important. Ambience’s AI models support urology really well and produce professional, readable documentation. Most of my documentation can be finished in the patient’s room, and the coding suggestions are fantastic. Ambience shows all the documentation to support those codes. My wife is an orthopedist, specializing in the spine, and is impressed enough that she’s using Ambience now.

Richard Long, MD

Urology

John Muir Health users on Ambience

Dr. Priti Patel, MD, CMIO

CMIO

Dr. Christopher Wulff, MD

Cardiology

Dr. Salvador G. Guevara, MD, FACS, FASCRS

Colorectal Surgery

Tanya Threewitt, MD

Family medicine

Richard Long, MD

Urology