A billion dollars poured into AI scribe startups last year. Health systems are adopting them faster than the evidence can keep up. And the first rigorous clinical trial just landed — with results that should make everyone think harder about what ROI actually means.
If you’re running a dental practice and weighing an AI scribe, here’s what the research says, where it falls short, and why the real return has almost nothing to do with seconds saved per note, which seems very fishy.
The Big Numbers Everyone’s Citing
The largest study to date comes from Kaiser Permanente’s medical group, published in NEJM Catalyst in 2025. Over 63 weeks, 7,260 physicians used AI scribes across 2.5 million patient encounters. The headline: 15,791 hours of documentation time saved — equivalent to 1,794 full workdays.
The softer metrics backed it up:
- 84% of physicians said it improved patient communication
- 82% reported better work satisfaction
- 47% of patients noticed their doctor spent less time on the computer
- 56% of patients said visit quality improved
- Zero patients reported a negative experience
The catch? This was an observational study — not a randomized trial. The physicians who used the tool most were already drowning in documentation. The people who need it most benefit the most. That’s useful, but it’s not the whole picture.
Then Came the First Real Test
UCLA Health published the first randomized clinical trial of AI scribes in NEJM AI, and the numbers told a different story.
Across 238 physicians and 72,000 encounters, researchers randomly assigned doctors to use one of two commercial AI scribe tools or continue their usual workflow. The results:
- One tool saved 41 seconds per note — but only 23 seconds more than the control group’s own improvement
- The other tool’s gains didn’t reach statistical significance
- Both showed modest (~7%) improvements in burnout scores
Twenty-three seconds. That’s the statistically significant finding from the most rigorous study we have.
But here’s the interesting part: physicians reported the tools felt far more valuable than 23 seconds would suggest. The improvement in how documentation felt — less burdensome, less draining — outpaced the clock.
The Accuracy Problem Worth Acknowledging
The UCLA trial surfaced something the marketing brochures skip: AI-generated notes “occasionally” contained clinically significant inaccuracies. Mostly omissions and pronoun errors. One mild patient safety event was reported.
The researchers put it plainly: “This technology requires active physician oversight, not passive acceptance.”
In dentistry, where a wrong tooth number or a missed allergy note isn’t just an inconvenience — it’s a liability — this matters even more. The question isn’t whether AI can write notes. It’s whether you can trust what it writes without reviewing every line. That’s why human-first AI design matters for dental practices.
What the ROI Conversation Gets Wrong
Here’s where the industry is stuck: almost every ROI analysis focuses on provider documentation time. Seconds per note. Minutes per day. Hours per year.
If you’ve run a dental practice, you know the burden doesn’t sit on the dentist’s shoulders alone. It’s spread across the entire team:
- The hygienist finishing perio charts and visit notes
- The treatment coordinator writing up case presentations and follow-up summaries
- The front desk managing patient communication, recalls, and insurance narratives
- The office manager tracking what fell through the cracks
A 2025 systematic review of AI scribe research (eight studies) found that nearly all evidence measures physician outcomes only. The team barely appears in the data.
That’s a massive blind spot. In a dental practice, the dentist isn’t the only one buried in admin work. Often, they’re not even the one buried deepest.
The ROI That Actually Moves the Needle
Zoom out from “seconds saved per note” and look at what changes a practice:
Better Patient Communication
When your team spends less time documenting, they spend more time with the patient. Not just chairside — in meaningful communication. Explaining treatment options. Answering questions without feeling rushed. Following up after a procedure.
The Kaiser study found patients noticed: nearly half said their provider spent less time on the computer and more time talking to them. That kind of one-on-one clinical time builds trust, improves case acceptance, and drives retention.
Lower Team Burden
Burnout isn’t just a provider problem. When the hygienist stays late to finish notes, or the front desk is drowning in follow-up tasks, the whole practice suffers.
The research consistently shows that even when time savings are modest, perceived burden drops significantly. People feel less ground down by paperwork. That translates to lower turnover, better morale, and a team that actually wants to show up tomorrow.
Stronger Follow-Through
This is the one nobody measures — and it might be the most valuable. How many treatment plans get presented but never scheduled? How many post-op follow-ups slip through the cracks? How many recall patients go silent?
When documentation and communication happen consistently, follow-through stops being a discipline problem and becomes a system output. The ROI isn’t in the time you saved — it’s in the production you stopped leaving on the table.
What a Dental AI Scribe Should Actually Do
The research makes one thing clear: time savings alone don’t justify the investment. The real return comes from what happens downstream of documentation.
A scribe that just transcribes and summarizes is solving yesterday’s problem. What dental practices actually need:
- Accurate capture — clinical encounters documented in the background, without disrupting the visit
- Structured output — notes, summaries, and insurance narratives formatted for your practice management system
- Whole-team support — not just the provider, but everyone who touches documentation and patient communication
- Built-in follow-through — treatment coordination, recalls, and post-op check-ins triggered by what happened in the chair
- Human oversight by design — AI drafts, your team reviews. No autonomous clinical decisions. No black boxes.
That’s the difference between a scribe and a practice system. And it’s where the real ROI lives.
The Bottom Line
The research on AI scribes is still young. The biggest randomized trial found 23 extra seconds of time savings per note. The biggest observational study found 15,000+ hours saved across a massive health system. The truth varies by specialty, tool, and implementation.
But here’s what’s consistent: providers feel better when AI handles documentation. Patients notice the difference. And practices that think beyond “time saved” toward “experience improved” are the ones seeing real returns.
If you’re evaluating AI scribes for your dental practice, don’t just ask how many minutes it saves the dentist. Ask what it does for your hygienist. Your front desk. Your patients. Your follow-through.
That’s where the ROI actually lives.
At OraCore, we build documentation tools for how dental practices actually work — not just how providers chart. Want to see how our whole-team approach works in practice?
Discover more from OraCore
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.