Pair AI efficiency with checks and balances for new clinicians

As practices bring on newer clinicians, the real balancing act is not just productivity versus quality. It is making documentation easier without letting shortcuts, including AI-assisted notes, create new errors or compliance risk.

Kelly Villella, director of Medical Education & Medical Practice at Wolters Kluwer Health, said onboarding should focus on trusted, workflow-integrated tools that genuinely save time, while setting clear expectations that AI is an aid, not a replacement, and that clinicians still need to review and verify their documentation.

Physicians Practice: Part of the friction is the balance of productivity, quality and documentation. How should practice managers balance those expectations when bringing in newer clinicians?

Kelly Villella: I’m still thinking in the vein of AI, but in general, when you’re brand new, you’re learning full-time responsibilities and juggling all of that for the first time. And that’s why documentation can be a friction point. The reason you get into the field, and your focus, is that the patient has a good experience, the diagnosis and support are correct, and they’re on the treatment plan they need.

So you really have to put thought into training related to tools and systems that are going to make clinicians more efficient, so they feel like they can focus on the core part of the responsibility. Practice leaders need to be thinking about: What trusted solutions are we already using in our workflow, and what are they doing to add expert AI into that workflow in a way that actually makes my staff more efficient and more effective?

But it’s also about educating staff that AI and humans aren’t perfect. We all make mistakes, so check your work. If you’re going to leverage AI, say, to transcribe ambient listening and transcription, read it through again and make sure there isn’t a mistake.

So how can we use technology, and AI is really driving this, to be more efficient and more effective, but also with checks and balances? That’s what we’re talking about day to day with our own employees. We have ways to use it, but it’s not doing your whole documentation job for you. It’s an aid. So getting really explicit about expectations matters: you can leverage these tools, but you need checks and balances.