Only 34% of allied health pros believe AI improves patient outcomes, survey finds

A survey of 682 allied health professionals by Zanda, a California-based practice management software company with more than 40,000 users in 23 countries has found that more than 70% of practitioners are seeing clients who have already consulted AI before their appointment. More worrying, 33.4% “have had a client push back on their clinical judgment citing something AI told them.”“The practitioner is no longer the first source of health information their client encounters,” concluded Zanda’s survey of AI usage. “Managing that shift, knowing when AI-sourced information is helpful context and when it is misleading noise that needs to be carefully unpacked is becoming a core clinical skill,” states the report.But seeing clients who have already consulted AI about their condition isn’t uniformly negative, as “several respondents described clients arriving better prepared, with clearer language for their symptoms and more specific questions.”The survey, conducted between March and May of this year, found some practitioners concerned about AI scribe use for documentation contributing to “skill erosion,” complaining AI-generated notes summarize what was said during a session—without capturing the practitioner’s clinical reasoning.“If AI-generated notes capture the contents of a session without the clinical architecture underlying it,” warns the report, “they may create notes that look thorough while missing the information that actually matters for continuity of care, supervision and medico-legal protection.”Several respondents also warned that outsourcing clinical note-taking to AI “removes a cognitive process that matters for clinical development.”The survey found that more than 60% of practitioners are convinced that AI saves them time and makes their work more manageable, but only 34.3% believe it improves patient outcomes. Practitioners aged 30 and under were the only exception, believing AI does play a role in improving patient outcomes.Following are some additional findings from the report: 42.1% of respondents spend more than six hours per week on paperwork; 18.6% spend nine to 21 hours and more per week on paperwork28.6% use AI daily, 16.4% use it weekly, 15.1% use it occasionally, 12.1% are in the “interested, but not yet” category and 27.7% don’t use it at allOf the 12.1% of “interested, but not yet” respondents, 60% feel “behind on technology” and 35% complain their workload is unsustainable, possibly leaving little time to learn about and adopt AI76% of practitioners use AI for drafting clinical notes, while 71% of daily users of AI achieve a 26% or better reduction in documentation timeApproximately 30% of respondents in most age categories use AI daily, but only 21.1% of practitioners in the 60 and over age group use it daily, reflecting proximity to retirement and reluctance to adopt new technology32.2% of Australian respondents, 25.8% of Americans and only 15.6% of U.K. respondents use AI daily. Data on use of AI in Canada was not reportedSurvey respondents included psychologists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, massage therapists and other allied health professionals.

Only 34% of allied health pros believe AI improves patient outcomes, survey finds

Register for free access or login.

Related Topics