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What Physicians Really Think About AI and Medicine

Heidi Team

8 May 2026•5 min read•
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AI adoption is surging, yet many physicians are still feeling a bit of trepidation when it comes to choosing the right clinical AI care partner or integrating AI into practice.

In a recent online survey of 103 physicians and non-physician providers by MJH Life Sciences, the parent company of Physicians Practice and Medical Economics, slightly more than half (55%) said they believed AI is making medicine better overall. A separate survey by the American Medical Association (AMA) reflects this cautious optimism, though in both surveys, concerns over regulatory oversight, legal issues, and job replacement are pervasive.

On a recent webinar, ‘Is AI making medicine better? What physicians really think,’ Dr. Nancy Cibotti, chief medical officer of Heidi, and Chris Mazzolini, content vice president at MJH Life Sciences, addressed these challenges while offering key insights into physicians’ AI sentiments.

“Physicians are naturally skeptical,” Mazzolini told webinar attendees. “I think as things evolve, they'll be curious to kind of track this feeling and where we go from here.”

Mazzolini cited findings from the MJH Life Sciences poll to highlight the areas in AI that physicians rated favorably. Among those who said AI is making medicine better:

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  • 32% said they are most excited about reducing documentation time through tools such as AI scribes
  • 19% cited “improving clinical decision support and diagnostic accuracy”
  • 11% said “increasing practice efficiency and reducing staff workload”

Dr. Cibotti told webinar attendees she’s not surprised by the findings.

“Documentation is a huge burden, and speaking as a PCP, I felt that pain for 30 years in practice until I implemented an AI scribe, so my family would know that I would be home no sooner than 7 p.m. on a Friday, trying to get my notes done,” she said. “I think what we’re seeing here, however, is there isn’t enough awareness about what other things AI scribes can do for you.”

Most people think AI is simply a tool to be used during a patient visit, but are unaware of the growing list of other use cases for AI in clinical practice, including prior authorizations, letters, or combining an ambient AI scribe with clinical decision support tools.

“Those things are fairly new to folks who don’t understand how [AI] can augment your efficiency,” she said. “Also, we are starting to see other members of the care team really use this technology, and in my experience at [Beth Israel Lahey Health], that’s been really positive. Put an AI scribe in the hands of our nurses, and they do a ton of patient education.”

Both Mazzolini and Cibotti addressed concerns about legal and patient-safety issues, as well as ancillary concerns that AI scribes may replace physicians, with Cibotti joking that she hoped AI didn’t replace physicians because she would be out of a job.

“If I’m with a patient, I am using my AI scribe to capture the visit, I use an Evidence tool to query maybe next steps or evidence-based guidelines … but it’s ultimately up to me and the patient to figure out what really applies to them,” Cibotti said. “There are things that the AI tool may not be able to do. They don’t know the patient. There may be some cultural beliefs, some SDOH factors we need to take into consideration.”

Mazzolini pointed to survey data that may underscore some physicians’ hesitancy around using or recommending AI. For example, 42% of physicians said they save “‘zero minutes” per day using AI for documentation; 18% said they saved up to 30 minutes; 20% saved up to an hour.

“We’ve got a very wide range here,” Mazzolini noted. “Some are saying no benefits in terms of time savings; others are saying they’re getting an hour back in their day.”

While studies vary, this data raises a few key questions: Is the AI tool itself working well? Is it a fit for the specialty, and customizable enough? Was the tool selected with clinicians’ needs in mind? Or did an IT leader choose the tool without consulting physicians and other providers?

“What it makes me think is … ‘are they using the right tool’ and ‘are they using the right tool in the right way,’” said Cibotti. “I think there's this conception that all AI tools, or all AI scribes, are the same, and they're really not. Some are deeply integrated, yet inflexible, and then others are very customizable. So you really need a tool that allows you to capture information and organize it in the way that you think. If you are spending a lot of time either correcting misinformation or reorganizing your note, you're not saying saving any time at all. So I think … this will play out over time, but I truly do believe there is much more significant time savings than what we saw in [recent] studies.”

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