Summarize this content to 100 words:
Healthcare professionals are drowning in paperwork and are turning to AI scribes. What they’re discovering is unexpected.
In a typical small therapy practice, a clinician might spend each session split between listening to a client and typing notes on a laptop. For decades, this divided focus has been the default way of working for many therapists.
After adopting an AI scribe, that same clinician can let the AI capture the patient conversation and generate notes in real time, without touching a keyboard. What tends to surprise clinicians is not the freedom from typing or the time savings, but how different the session feels when they can maintain consistent eye contact and presence with their clients.
With AI handling the note-taking in the background, more of the clinician’s attention stays in the room. Patients often respond by sharing more, asking more questions, and commenting that their clinician feels more present and engaged.
This experience is not unique to therapy. A new survey of nearly 450 clinicians reveals that healthcare professionals nationwide are adopting AI documentation tools to improve patient care, reduce administrative burden, and prevent burnout.
The Paperwork Crisis Is Universal
The data cuts across specialties. Among the mental health and primary care clinicians surveyed, 36 percent named progress tracking and documentation as their single biggest challenge. Not insurance or scheduling, but documentation.
In medium-sized practices with 10 to 49 clinicians, the number climbs to nearly 50 percent. These are established practices with infrastructure reporting that documentation is the top pain point.
“What we’re seeing is clinicians are completely overwhelmed,” said Gal Steinberg, CEO of Twofold Health, the company behind the survey. Since starting Twofold, Steinberg has spoken with thousands of clinicians across specialties about their daily workflows. “They’re spending two or three hours every night on documentation to manage reporting requirements to comply with value-based care contracts.
Steinberg says clinicians lack the tools to handle the paperwork burden efficiently. “This leaves clinicians stuck in spreadsheets and disconnected patient portals, manually tracking data that should be automated,” he added.
Universal Burden
Primary care physicians are documenting blood pressure logs, medication adherence, A1C trends, lifestyle modifications, while therapists are tracking progress against standardized measures, assigning homework, and documenting rehabilitation progress. All of this is necessary clinical work. Virtually all of it is happening after hours, according to Steinberg.
The administrative burden has become so overwhelming that it is preventing many clinicians from doing core clinical work. Progress tracking and documentation requirements take time away from direct patient care and therapeutic presence, and when clinicians have tools that reduce that administrative load, they see improvements in staff retention and reduced burnout, said Vanessa Valles, LCSW-S, Group Practice Owner of A New Start Counseling.
In practice, that can look like evenings spent in front of a laptop rather than with family, with hours blocked off solely for catching up on progress notes and outcome tracking.
Less Paperwork. Better Balance
The solution many healthcare professionals are leaning on is automation. An AI scribe sits in on appointments, recording the conversation. After the visit, it generates clinical notes, eliminating the need for clinicians to spend two hours at night on documentation. Instead, they spend ten minutes reviewing what AI captured.
“I’m always concerned about completing my documentation and being in compliance for insurance claims,” added Rob Cravatta, LCSW, of Florida-based Elevated Self, LLC. “AI helps me with organizing when there is less time for note writing, especially when I have back-to-back clients.”
Clinicians using these tools report reclaiming 30 to 45 minutes per day, adding up to 2 to 3 hours per week. For someone spending nights in paperwork, that’s a significant boost to a better work-life balance.
An Irony Worth Noting
Clinicians adopted AI scribes to solve their time crisis. What they discovered is that solving the time crisis actually improved the core work of medicine itself. The paperwork automation makes the human connection better.
Mental Health Therapist Liz Toledo said, “AI makes me less stressed. I can focus on my patients, and don’t have to think about writing the notes. All my attention and my thoughts are about how I can best serve my patients’ needs.”
“That’s remarkable when you think about it,” Steinberg said. “We built this tool to fight the documentation burden. But the secondary effect, the human effect, might matter more. If AI documentation makes clinical appointments better, that’s a quality-of-life improvement for clinicians and an improvement to patient care.”
Adoption Growing
The adoption of AI scribes across healthcare is accelerating. Practices and clinicians who implemented these tools are expanding their use. Twofold Health reports that user retention on its AI clinical documentation platform is high, and clients are seeing sustained value in both time saved and reduced burnout.
Healthcare professionals didn’t sign up to be administrators. They signed up to help people. Yet, the system forced them to do both. Now technology is starting to let them focus on what they were actually trained to do.
“What we’re learning from clinicians is that the real crisis was never just the time,” Steinberg said. “It was the fact that they were being pulled away from the actual work. They couldn’t be present. They couldn’t focus on their patients. Technology is fixing that. And in fixing that, it’s making healthcare better.”
The paperwork crisis is being solved with automation. But what’s being revealed underneath is something more important. When clinicians aren’t drowning in documentation, they’re better at their jobs. Their patients feel it, and care works better.
About the Research:
Twofold Health surveyed 446 mental health and primary care clinicians in October 2025 about their biggest workflow challenges. The survey included therapists, counselors, social workers, psychiatrists, primary care physicians, and nurse practitioners working in private practices ranging from solo practitioners to groups of 50 or more. Thirty-six percent cited progress tracking and documentation as their primary pain point. Among medium-sized practices with 10 to 49 clinicians, that number rose to nearly 50 percent. Sixty-one percent of respondents were solo practitioners, 19 percent worked in practices of 2 to 9 clinicians, and 9 percent worked in practices of 10 to 49 clinicians.
