Ambient AI Reduces Open Charts by 90% at UToledo Health

UToledo Health, the academic health system affiliated with the University of Toledo, has published real-world results from its deployment of Nabla's ambient AI documentation platform, reporting a 90% reduction in open charts and measurable improvements in the quality of physician-patient interactions.^[1]

Before deploying the ambient AI tool, UToledo Health was managing a persistent backlog of more than 400 open charts — documentation that physicians had not completed after patient encounters. Within weeks of deploying Nabla's platform, that number fell to fewer than 30. The health system attributed the improvement to the platform's ability to automatically generate structured clinical notes from recorded patient-clinician conversations, eliminating the after-hours documentation burden that drives physician burnout.^[1]

How Nabla Works

Nabla's ambient AI scribe listens to clinical encounters in real time and generates draft notes formatted to the physician's specialty and EHR workflow. The platform supports more than 50 medical specialties and integrates with major EHR systems including Epic and Cerner. Unlike dictation tools that require structured commands, Nabla's system processes natural conversational speech and identifies clinically relevant content — chief complaint, history of present illness, assessment, and plan — without physician prompting.^[2]

A peer-reviewed study published in medRxiv in April 2026 examined Nabla Copilot's deployment in routine clinical practice, finding that the system produced documentation that was rated as accurate or highly accurate in the majority of encounters reviewed by supervising clinicians.^[3]

Physician Experience

Beyond documentation metrics, UToledo Health reported improvements in physician-reported quality of patient connection. When physicians are no longer focused on typing notes during encounters, they maintain more eye contact and engage more directly with patients — a shift that clinicians and patients both notice. This finding is consistent with broader research on ambient AI scribes, which has consistently shown that reduced documentation burden correlates with higher patient satisfaction scores and lower physician burnout rates.^[1]

Market Context

Nabla is one of several ambient AI documentation companies competing for health system contracts, alongside Abridge, Nuance DAX, Suki AI, and DeepScribe. The category has seen significant investment in 2025 and 2026 as health systems seek to address the documentation burden that the American Medical Association estimates costs physicians an average of two hours of administrative work for every hour of direct patient care.^[4]

References

1. Healthcare IT News. "At UToledo Health, ambient AI decreases open charts, improves documentation." April 30, 2026. https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/utoledo-health-ambient-ai-decreases-open-charts-improves-documentation
2. Nabla. "Nabla Copilot Product Overview." 2026. https://www.nabla.com
3. Misrai V, et al. "The Epistemic Promise and Limits of Ambient AI in Clinical Documentation." medRxiv. April 30, 2026. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2026/04/30/2026.04.29.26351997.full.pdf
4. American Medical Association. "Physician Burnout and Administrative Burden." 2025. https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/physician-health/physician-burnout