9 moves to make before you put AI in your front office

Only 7 percent of medical practices describe themselves as fully staffed and stable. Another 80 percent say they are adequately staffed but not sustainably so, and more than 90 percent report annual front-office turnover of 20 percent or higher. Those findings come from The State of Practice Management 2026, a survey of 200 U.S. practice executives released Sept. 10 by front-office services vendor Third Way Health.

Practices have responded by buying capacity. The survey found that 81 percent now use artificial intelligence for at least one front-office function and 86 percent outsource some portion of the operation. What they have not done is measure it. Only half of mid-to-large practices track prior authorization turnaround time and just 11 percent track call abandonment, which leaves most administrators unable to say what any of the spending changed.

The survey also punctures a common assumption. Protecting the patient experience is the single most-cited reason practices hesitate to expand AI, named by 80 percent. Among practices that went ahead anyway, improved patient experience was the most frequently reported result, at 79 percent. Meanwhile none of the 200 executives chose a mostly automated front office as an ideal model. Here are nine places to start.

Note: The State of Practice Management 2026 is vendor-sponsored research. Third Way Health sells the services the survey measures, and its framing should be read with that in mind. Fieldwork was conducted by Wakefield Research between June 23 and July 9, 2026, among 100 executives at practices with 50 to 100 medical professionals and 100 at practices with more than 100, with a margin of error of plus or minus 6.9 percentage points overall and 9.8 points for each size cohort.