VHA Is Now Using Ambient Scribe: How It's Changing Veteran Care
During a Veteran’s medical appointment, a provider who’s moving back and forth between the conversation and the computer may be quite noticeable. Documentation in the electronic health record is an important part of care, but it can also take time and attention away from the visit.
The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is now using Ambient Scribe to help reduce some of that documentation work. As of June 2026, the VA had rolled out the technology to primary care providers nationwide after first testing it at 10 VA medical centers.
With a Veteran's permission, Ambient AI Scribe listens to the conversation during an appointment and creates a draft note. The provider then must review, edit, and approve the note before it becomes part of the medical record. The technology is designed to assist with documentation, not make clinical decisions.
Early VA results suggest the tool may help clinicians spend less time finishing notes after work and give Veterans more attention during appointments. But AI-generated notes can make mistakes, and the VA still has to watch closely for problems with accuracy, privacy, and safety as the technology expands.
Here’s what the VA has learned so far about how Ambient Scribe is affecting Veterans, clinicians, and medical appointments.
Ambient Scribe Is Now Available Across VA Primary Care
the VA first rolled out Ambient AI Scribe at 10 medical centers:
- Dallas
- East Orange, New Jersey
- Erie, Pennsylvania
- Kansas City
- Loma Linda, California
- Marion, Illinois
- Miami
- Prescott, Arizona
- San Francisco
- Wilmington, Delaware
By June, the VA said Ambient Scribe had been deployed to all PACT primary care providers nationwide.
In July, the VA also said it planned to bring the technology to some outpatient specialty providers during summer 2026. A broader contract extension is expected later in the year.
That doesn’t mean Ambient Scribe is used during every VA appointment.
Providers must first get a Veteran's verbal permission. Veterans can say no before it starts or ask for it to be stopped during the visit. Doing so won’t affect their care. While the Veteran and clinician talk, Ambient AI Scribe works in the background and creates a draft note based on the conversation.
The provider then checks the note, makes any needed changes, and signs it before it enters the Veteran's EHR. The provider still makes all clinical decisions. That review is important. A note created by AI is still only a draft until the clinician checks and approves it.
What Veterans May Notice During an Appointment
One of the main goals of Ambient AI Scribe is simple: help providers spend less time typing while talking with patients.
At the Minneapolis VA Health Care System, the VA told Veterans the technology could help providers focus more on the conversation instead of documenting everything as they talk.
The system also emphasized that clinicians still review and update everything before it’s saved to the medical record.
The VA has also shared one Veteran's experience with the technology.
Veteran John Brennan used Ambient Scribe during a primary care visit. He said his provider was able to stay focused on him instead of repeatedly looking back and forth between him and the computer.
“It felt like I had her complete attention, which made the conversation more comfortable, open, and productive,” Brennan told VHA’s Digital Health Office (DHO).
That is one Veteran's experience, so it doesn’t mean everyone will notice the same difference.
A larger early look comes from the Kansas City VA Medical Center, where VA tested Ambient AI Scribe with 18 clinicians over 90 days.
What the VA Learned From the Kansas City Evaluation
All 18 clinicians who took part in the Kansas City evaluation said they wanted to keep using Ambient Scribe.
Providers reported better engagement with patients, less after-hours documentation, and more detailed notes.
Before using Ambient Scribe, some clinicians said they spent anywhere from 15 minutes to more than an hour finishing documentation after clinic. During the evaluation, most said the tool saved them about one to two hours of after-hours work.
One clinician described the difference this way, “Ambient Scribe has enhanced my patient visits as I can be more focused on my interaction with the Veteran.”
Veteran satisfaction scores also went up in several areas during the three-month evaluation.
The VA said the score for providers listening carefully rose by almost 3 percentage points from before the evaluation. Other patient-experience scores increased by about 2 to 3 points.
Those results are encouraging, but they have limits.
The evaluation lasted 90 days and included only 18 clinicians at one VA medical center. Veteran satisfaction improved during the same period, but the available results don’t prove that Ambient Scribe caused every increase.
Still, the findings offer an early look at what the VA hopes the technology can do: reduce after-hours paperwork and give providers more time to focus on Veterans.
Could Ambient AI Scribe Reduce Clinician Burnout?
Medical documentation doesn’t always end when a patient leaves the room. Clinicians may still need to finish charts, correct information, enter orders, and complete other paperwork after appointments or after normal clinic hours.
The Kansas City results suggest Ambient Scribe may help reduce some of that work. One clinician said the tool allowed them to finish their notes and leave on time for the first time since they started working at VA 10 years earlier.
The VA also reports that providers using Ambient AI Scribe have experienced less after-hours charting, lower cognitive load, and clearer documentation.
The department's FY2026 budget materials set a goal of cutting several hours of documentation work each week through wider use of the technology. That doesn’t mean VA has proven that Ambient AI Scribe reduces burnout across the entire health system.
Burnout can come from many things, including staffing, workload, scheduling, difficult cases, and workplace conditions. The Kansas City evaluation focused more on documentation time, workflow, provider experience, and Veteran satisfaction.
For now, the clearer finding is that some clinicians are getting time back. VA will need more data to know whether that leads to lower burnout over time.
The Technology Still Makes Mistakes
Saving time is only useful if the resulting medical record is accurate.
That’s why the provider-review requirement is one of the most important parts of VA's approach.
A 2026 study involving VA-affiliated researchers tested two ambient scribing systems during simulated visits in neurology, cardiology, gastroenterology, and hematology-oncology. The researchers found moderate overall documentation quality, and specialists had different views on how useful the technology could be.
Clinicians also found problems in some draft notes. These included incorrect information, examination findings that were never discussed, missing details, and diagnoses stated with more certainty than the conversation supported.
Some specialists were also concerned about how well ambient scribing systems could use information already stored elsewhere in the EHR.
The study used simulated appointments and two unnamed ambient scribing systems. It wasn’t a direct test of every note created by the system the VA is now using.
But the findings show why providers still need to check AI-generated notes carefully.
Ambient Scribe can write the first draft. The clinician is still responsible for making sure the final medical record is correct.
What Safeguards Does the VA Have in Place?
Veterans have several controls when Ambient AI Scribe is used.
- VA says the clinician must obtain verbal consent before activating the tool. A Veteran can decline or ask for it to be stopped during the appointment.
- The AI-generated documentation must be reviewed and edited by the provider before it’s signed into the EHR.
- VA says information handled through Ambient Scribe is protected under federal privacy and security requirements, including HIPAA. Minneapolis VA also tells patients that the audio recording is automatically deleted after 30 days.
The VA has also classified Ambient AI Scribe as a high-impact AI use case. That means the technology is subject to additional risk-management and safety requirements.
According to the VA Office of Inspector General, those safeguards include measures such as pre-deployment testing and human oversight. The OIG compared those protections with VA GPT and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. Those general AI chat tools had been used by some employees for clinical work but hadn’t received the same high-impact classification.
What the VA Inspector General Actually Found
A recent OIG report raised concerns about the use of generative AI in VA clinical settings.
But the report's main concerns were about general-purpose AI chat tools, especially VA GPT and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, rather than Ambient Scribe itself.
The OIG found that those tools didn’t have the same high-impact classification and safeguards as Ambient Scribe.
In fact, one of the OIG's recommendations was for VHA to consider using some of Ambient Scribe's safeguards for other AI tools used in clinical work. That doesn’t mean that the technology has no risks.
The OIG also found broader gaps in how VA tracks AI-related safety problems. These included limited coordination with the National Center for Patient Safety and no AI-specific system for identifying safety events involving AI-generated documentation.
The OIG recommended adding AI risks to existing patient-safety reporting systems and training employees to recognize and report problems.
The VA agreed or agreed in principle with all three recommendations. The department said it plans to provide more guidance and training and improve how AI-related safety issues are tracked.
The OIG didn’t recommend that the VA stop using Ambient Scribe. Instead, the report shows why tools like this still need testing, human review, and ongoing monitoring.
What We Still Don't Know About Ambient Scribe
The VA's early results give clinicians several reasons to keep using the technology.
At Kansas City, providers reported getting some of their time back. Veterans also reported strong satisfaction scores. Other VA facilities have pointed to possible benefits such as more eye contact, less typing, and better documentation.
But the early evaluation can’t answer everything about a nationwide rollout.
There are still several things the VA will need to watch:
- Will clinicians at other VA facilities save the same amount of time?
- How often do providers need to correct AI-generated notes?
- Will Veterans feel comfortable using the technology during sensitive health conversations?
- Will Ambient AI Scribe work as well in specialties that depend heavily on imaging, lab results, and information from previous visits?
Those questions may become even more important as the VA expands the technology beyond primary care.
The VA-affiliated simulation study found that specialists didn’t all view ambient scribing the same way.
Neurologists saw more potential value during appointments built around conversation. Cardiologists had more concerns about how the technology would work with information already stored in the EHR.
That means the tool may not work the same way in every specialty.
The Human Part Still Matters
Ambient Scribe is meant to reduce paperwork and not replace the clinician.
Veterans still decide whether the tool can be used during their appointment. Providers still review everything it creates. Medical decisions also remain with the health care professional, not the AI system.
The early Kansas City results suggest that reducing typing may give some providers more time to listen and less work to finish at home.
The VA will now have to see whether those results continue as Ambient AI Scribe reaches more facilities, providers, Veterans, and medical specialties.
VA Media Relations and several VA health care systems were contacted for more information about provider feedback, Veteran experiences, documentation workload, safeguards, and the wider rollout. VA Media Relations acknowledged the inquiry, but no detailed response was received by the publication deadline.
For Veterans, the change may be simple. During a future primary care visit, a provider may ask for permission to let Ambient Scribe create the first draft of the medical note.
The Veteran can say yes or no. Either way, the clinician, not the software, remains responsible for what goes into the medical record.
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BY ALLISON KIRSCHBAUM
Veteran, Military History & Culture Writer at VeteranLife
Navy Veteran
Allison Kirschbaum is a Navy Veteran and an experienced historian. She has seven years of experience creating compelling digital content across diverse industries, including Military, Defense, History, SaaS, MarTech, FinTech, financial services, insurance, and manufacturing. She brings this expertis...
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Allison Kirschbaum is a Navy Veteran and an experienced historian. She has seven years of experience creating compelling digital content across diverse industries, including Military, Defense, History, SaaS, MarTech, FinTech, financial services, insurance, and manufacturing. She brings this expertis...
