AI Is Rewriting the Workday: The Hidden Impact on Practitioner Well-Being and Patient Care
In health and wellness clinics and practices across North America, something subtle but profound is happening. Practitioners are talking about AI as a new technology, but even more, they’re talking about how it changes the emotional texture of their work. Less cognitive strain. More presence with patients. A sense that the day is once again manageable.
We took an opportunity to speak with clinicians who are actively integrating AI into their workflows and thought it could be helpful to share what we found. What emerged wasn’t a story about efficiency alone, but about relief, sustainability, and reclaiming attention.
What practitioners think of AI in healthcare
For many clinics adopting AI, the biggest changes aren’t technical at all. They’re emotional, relational, and tied to how the clinic feels overall.
“AI isn’t meant to replace that first impression, it’s meant to protect it, says chiropractor and Clinic Accelerator mentor Dr. Manju Asdhir. When AI handles the transactional work… the front desk staff is free to focus on what matters: greeting patients warmly, building rapport, and answering nuanced questions. AI makes scaling less intimidating at the beginning; you no longer have to be the jack of all trades.”
Physical therapist Sean Overin shares a similar perspective. In his practice, AI has changed the feel of his clinical days. Overin’s experience reinforces a theme we heard repeatedly: the value of AI in clinic life is saving time and surprisingly recovering attention. “I hear people’s stories more clearly, I have more cognitive energy throughout the day, and I no longer need a post-clinic nap.”
When used thoughtfully, AI supports staff in finding more balance in their day and, as Dr. Manju put it, protects their ability to create a great first impression.
So what does that look like in practice? Four areas stand out as simple, high-impact starting points.
Where AI is quietly transforming clinical work
Clinic marketing
Dr. Manju often leans on AI to really get inside the mind of her target audience. Millions of people are shifting from traditional Google searches to tools like ChatGPT, using its conversational style to learn about their diagnosis and who they should seek care from.
That shift, she explains, means thinking of AI tools for marketing less as an advertiser and more as a listener. “By using AI to understand your target patient, you can build your socials, website, and even do some community events that focus on this.”
Clinics are beginning to use AI tools as a mirror into patient curiosity. A typical prompt in your LLM of choice (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc) might sound something like:
What are patients in [your city] curious about when it comes to [physical therapy, counselling, or your discipline here]?
or
What common questions do new [chiropractic patients] have?
Use those responses as inspiration (not fact) to guide the content your clinic creates.
Answering common questions in blog posts, creating short videos about treatment options on your TikTok, or sharing local wellness tips on your website that your community is genuinely searching for. These moments of education build trust long before a patient ever walks through the door.
Reports and business planning
Downloading a report and staring at a thousand-row spreadsheet, trying to figure out how to slice and dice that data to get the information you’re after, that can feel like a pretty big hill to climb.
This is another area where AI tools can help you out. They can quickly summarize data and highlight trends. “We export a lot of our key business metrics, like revenue totals, report-completion data, and even marketing metrics from Jane,” Sean told me.
The first step is downloading or gathering some data you’re looking to analyze. Then you’ll want to make sure you remove any patient-identifying information (if present) from the data, and then it’s ready for upload.
Let’s say you’re uploading your clinic’s sales report from the last year. Plug that sheet into your go-to AI assistant with a prompt along the lines of:
I’m the owner of a healthcare clinic, and I’ve uploaded a spreadsheet of all the clinic's appointments and sales from the past year. Each row includes the appointment date, service type, practitioner name, and total sale amount.
Please:
-Summarize key business trends such as busy months, quiet months, and any seasonal patterns. -Identify top-performing services and practitioners based on total revenue and number of appointments. -Point out any lower-performing services or times of year that may need attention.
Also create charts (bar, line, or pie) where appropriate and spreadsheet-style tables showing the breakdowns clearly. Feel free to bring up anything else that sticks out in the data as notable.
And then watch it spin up tons of helpful insights and charts for you to check out and look into further.
Being able to work with data that’s already been analyzed and put back together in a clean, readable format saves a ton of time and gives a solid jumping-off point for turning your clinic data into impactful business decisions.
As always with AI, it’s best to do a quick check to make sure what you’re seeing is accurate to your original data. But once you’ve checked for accuracy, using AI for data analysis is a great way to support better business decisions and even surface trends you may not have noticed on your own.
AI scribes for documentation
An AI scribe is a tool that helps generate clinical notes, letters, and documentation for you. Some clinicians use it during the appointment so the scribe records the full conversation and turns it into notes, while others prefer to dictate a quick summary right after. Both approaches reduce the mental load of recalling details later or juggling note-taking during appointments.
Sean describes using an AI scribe as a shift he felt immediately. “It changed the feel of my clinical days. I can see ten patients and leave with less than thirty minutes of charting.” The impact wasn’t just time saved. “I’m far more present in appointments because I’m not mentally multitasking or trying to hold details in my head.”
Dr. Manju has also found it to be a helpful tool with the newer practitioners she works with. “Most new grads find their evenings filled with trying to finish their notes and remembering exact details of the appointment; this can take 2–3 hours of time each evening,” she says. And the same is often true for solo practitioners who juggle every administrative task alongside their documentation.
That’s why she encourages clinics she mentors to try a compliant medical AI scribe to make documentation faster and easier. “With an AI scribe, you can dictate notes while assessing and treating patients, so you can spend your energy on building clinical excellence and patient relationships.”
AI scribes can take the friction out of documentation and can be customized to fit a clinician’s documentation style. For many, it simply makes it possible to end the day on time. A small but meaningful change that can make practice feel more sustainable.
Training and internal clinic workflows
You can also set up custom AI agents.
✨ A custom AI agent is a dedicated chat window you set up and teach to answer questions or do tasks your way. You can create one yourself and train it on your clinic’s own information like policies, workflows, templates, and best practices.
Some clinics use custom AI agents so staff can:
- Practice difficult conversations by rehearsing staff meetings, patient conversations, or tense scenarios in a low-stakes space. Using the voice mode most AI assistants offer feels like real role-playing, just without the pressure.
- Get quick access to internal policies by asking an agent to surface billing rules, insurance steps, workflows, or clinic templates in seconds, instead of searching through shared drives or binders.
- Turn your clinic’s know-how into training by creating a consistent onboarding buddy that teaches new team members how your clinic answers phones, greets patients, manages cancellations, and handles day-to-day tasks.
Sean shared that custom AI agents have been working well for him and his team.“Whether delivering tough clinical news or navigating staff discussions, it’s a safe place to practice communication and get instant feedback,” he tells me.
💡 If this piques your interest, check out How to Create a Custom AI Agent for Your Practice. It walks you through how to set this up in real life with examples from a real-world clinic story.
Choosing what works for your clinic
The clinics we spoke with were searching for more humane days and for work that feels sustainable so that the care they offer feels unrushed. AI, used thoughtfully, is becoming one way to safeguard that space.
Front Desk Digital is brought to you by Jane. 🩵
Many of Jane’s customers are realizing the value of AI in notetaking with our AI scribe that’s built specifically for healthcare practitioners and designed with data privacy in mind. When you’re ready, we’d love for you to take a few moments to learn more about Jane’s AI Scribe.
