Today’s clinicians are spending more time documenting care than delivering it. This reality is not lost on health care providers, many of whom feel burnt out and unfulfilled by this overwhelming administrative burden. The digitization of health care, which once felt like a promise of efficiency, has pulled clinicians away from patients and toward screens. The problem isn’t technology itself; it’s the result of poorly designed siloed solutions and disconnected workflows.

Many health systems have an excess of point solutions to manage processes like scheduling, billing, compliance, ambient scribing, coding, and more. Rather than making clinicians’ jobs easier, a large and disconnected tech stack demands constant manual effort to bridge gaps that technology should be closing.

The result is measurable and significant. In a study of physicians using electronic health records (EHRs) in a community emergency department, physicians spent twice as much time on data entry (44 percent) and reviewing test results and records (12 percent) combined than they did on direct patient care (28 percent). During a busy 10-hour shift, the total number of mouse clicks per physician approached 4,000.

That’s a lot of administrative work, and it’s not sustainable for clinicians who are already stretched thin by high patient loads. As clinicians struggle to navigate fragmented workflows and point solutions, they have less time for the real core work of patient care. To fix this, we must fundamentally rethink how health care technology and care delivery workflows are designed. By connecting disparate workflows and implementing context-aware agentic AI, we can free up clinicians to practice at the top of their licenses, shifting their time back to the core of care instead of the chore.

Jane’s seamless care journey from intake to billing

The path forward is not more tools, but better-connected ones. Most health systems now rely on hundreds of siloed solutions, each built for a single task but none built to work together. This fragmentation forces clinicians and staff to take on the burden of manually transferring information between systems and correcting errors along the way.

A connected workflow changes that equation. By implementing interoperable technology that enables data to flow between solutions, health systems can increase efficiency and create a care journey that is more optimal for both patients and providers.

Imagine a patient, Jane, visits an orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Johnson. Even before the visit, order entry, referral management, and previsit planning have already transpired. Dr. Johnson welcomes Jane and reviews her past medical history. She reports low back pain and spine tenderness. Dr. Johnson examines Jane and reviews her most recent X-rays and lab results, which show a slight elevation in her white blood cell count and degenerative changes in the lumbar spine. On physical exam, there are decreased reflexes in the right lower extremity. Dr. Johnson discusses the diagnostic possibilities (including musculoskeletal back pain, rheumatologic disorders, a compression fracture, or a spinal abscess) and explains the importance of getting an MRI to get an accurate diagnosis. She orders the MRI scan and schedules Jane’s next follow-up appointment.

During Jane’s visit, an AI ambient scribe takes notes so that Dr. Johnson’s attention can remain 100 percent focused on Jane, not the keyboard. After the appointment, the clinical documentation from Jane’s visit is structured and cleaned by AI and flows seamlessly into the next critical step: accurate medical coding. Jane’s chart is accurately coded within hours of her visit, with every code justified and documented. With no manual handoffs, there are fewer delays, no lost information, and minimal administrative burden on clinicians. Finally, the coded chart automatically identifies services requiring prior authorization (such as Jane’s MRI) and prepares the submission, including gathering the necessary documentation and validating payer rules. As a result, Jane is able to get her MRI approved and scheduled faster, preventing care delays and revenue leakage.

Connected workflows enable empathetic patient care

Jane’s example shows how impactful a connected, AI-enabled workflow can be. By connecting workflows and solutions, clinicians are freed up, patient experiences are improved, and revenue is protected. Data flows from documentation to coding to prior authorization and billing, and each step feeds into the next automatically, reducing administrative burden and delays. AI handles the routine tasks and only escalates complex decisions and exceptions, leaving health care workers to focus on strategic initiatives, critical judgment, and empathetic patient care.

The benefits of reducing administrative burden for clinicians are backed by data: One study found that clinicians using medical scribes self-reported less after-hours EHR documentation, and were more likely to spend more than 75 percent of each visit interacting with the patient. Like Dr. Johnson and Jane, both the clinician and the patient benefit from shifting the focus of the visit from clicks on the computer to human interaction.

Clinicians focused on patients, not paperwork

Bringing the majority of clinician’s work from chore to core is crucial to addressing some of the health care industry’s most pressing problems, such as physician and nursing shortages, staff burnout and turnover, care delays, and thin financial margins. The right balance of advanced, connected technology and human expertise will help to realign tasks to reduce administrative burden and improve efficiency.

This change will require a fundamental shift to care delivery models, but the potential is enormous: Research published by McKinsey & Company in 2023 found that 10 percent to 20 percent of nurses’ time could be freed up through “digital approaches that automate tasks,” potentially closing the workforce shortage by up to 300,000 nurses.

Those reclaimed hours represent more than productivity gains. They mean fewer late nights finishing charts, more sustainable careers, and more meaningful moments with patients. When we remove the weight of unnecessary manual tasks, clinicians can return to what called them to the health care profession in the first place: caring for people when it matters most.

Grace E. Terrell is a physician executive.