Commure and Athelas sign deal to acquire Augmedix (NASDAQ: AUGX), creating the largest artificial intelligence software provider in healthcare

Tell us a little bit about yourself—what do you like to do outside of work?

My name is Alex Young-Davies and I’m a Canadian product designer living in San Francisco, California. Today, my role is Product Design Lead for Athelas Air, Commure’s EMR offering. I really enjoy this position because, simply put, there is so much opportunity for modern design practices and UX improvements in the healthcare space. This is especially true when it comes to EMR software. Many of the physicians, nurses, schedulers, and staff who care for us every day are being forced to use extremely outdated software because there is simply no alternative. Having the opportunity to shape what could come next in this space is really interesting and exciting.

Outside of work, I like to keep myself busy with other active and creative activities. I’ve been an avid skateboarder since I was a kid, and I still try to get out at least once a week to learn something new or find a new park. I also genuinely enjoy digital design, so I often work on personal projects in my free time. In the last few years, I’ve been using my free time to create an icon library for digital products that is flexible and modern in appearance. Very nerdy, I know, but it brings me a lot of joy, and I love tweaking the tiny details for each pictogram.

As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

When I was a kid, I dreamed about being an architect. My grandfather was an architect, so I was exposed to the craft from an early age. Looking at all his drawings of structures and people was so inspiring. As I grew up, this interest broadened, and eventually I knew I just needed to do something creative for my career. I eventually studied Industrial Design at Carleton University, which introduced me to fabrication, product development, and even a stint in lighting design. That shift toward product design is what ultimately led me to digital design, where I’ve happily stayed ever since.

Describe a day in the life of your role.

My day-to-day will often vary, but it’s usually a mix of designing, strategic problem solving, and exploration. I primarily work in Figma for UI design and determining user flows, Notion for requirements and documentation, and Cursor for building realistic prototypes.

While there is no “standard day” for me, I usually begin by doing a little bit of ideation and open exploration for whatever I’m currently working on. After this, I’ll have discussions with other individuals around the org to work through implementation challenges and plan out the future of where we want to take this modern EMR product.

When I’m not in the office, the team and I will visit real customer sites so we can talk to the people who are using our tools in their day-to-day. These days are incredibly rewarding and valuable because there’s so much to learn from watching people use the tools you design in a real clinical environment.

‍How would you describe the Commure company culture?

Commure’s culture is one that thrives on speed and ownership. Like many start-ups and Silicon Valley companies, the pace here is very fast, and the mentality of “fail early, fail often” is alive and well. While it can feel chaotic sometimes, it ultimately yields an ability to be much more responsive and nimble when compared to our competitors. This ability to quickly change direction and apply learnings is a fundamental differentiator for us, and is what helps us be the first to give customers exactly what they want.

In addition to the speed, Commure encourages and rewards a good combination of ownership and collaboration. While some companies require layers of management approval or universal consensus to move forward, Commure gives its employees the agency to identify opportunities and take actions on them. Think of it as side-quests. If you can highlightan opportunity that supports product and business goals, you have the agency to dive in, gather a team, and tackle it. Often, this has actually led to new features and even products that get incorporated into the main product offering.

What advice would you give someone on their first day at Commure?

In my opinion, the best way to begin your tenure at Commure is to ask questions and be a student. Given the complexity of healthcare, there is a lot of contextual knowledge that one can acquire. While it may seem daunting initially, building a really strong understanding of who it is we’re building for and what their true needs, challenges, and desires are is invaluable. There isn’t one book or document that will give you everything you need to know; it will come in time from exposure to customers and discussions with colleagues. The key here, though, is to go in with a bias towards wanting to learn and expand your understanding. There is no such thing as a bad question here, and everyone will be more than happy to help you build your knowledge. 

What has been your greatest accomplishment so far at Commure?

While ‘greatest accomplishment’ feels very grandiose, I’d say the challenge I enjoyed working on the most was our EMR calendar redesign. Throughout the process of determining, first, what makes a good calendar and, second, what makes a competitive EMR calendar, I discovered that calendar UX is super interesting and unique. The greatest challenge I faced was determining how we could show lots of critical medical details on a calendar block while also reducing its size footprint by at least 50%. While this was challenging, it was so interesting to dive deep into the world of calendars and so rewarding to have real users try out my proposals and return positive feedback.

The most rewarding aspect of this experience was that it was fun. Getting to identify a real problem and take a solution from the initial proposal to implementation was an incredible learning experience. Plus, seeing some of my design work helping real people in their day-to-day life is incredibly humbling, and it motivates me to keep chipping away at the incredible opportunities that a modern EMR presents.

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Interested in a career building the next generation of healthcare technology powered by AI? We are always looking for talented people across our departments.

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Artificial intelligence is already reducing documentation burden, streamlining coordination, and improving efficiency across clinical and operational workflows. To explore where AI is delivering real value today and where it needs to go next, Commure hosted Interdisciplinary AI Approaches to Enhance Care Coordination and Improve Outcomes, bringing together leaders from medicine, digital innovation, and applied AI:

• Jean-Luc Neptune, MD (Moderator) – Executive Medical Director, Commure
  
  
• Geoffrey Burnham, MD – Hospitalist Medical Director, Medical City Dallas, Envision Healthcare, HCA Healthcare
  
  
• Edmondo Robinson, MD – CEO and Founder, Downeast Digital; Former Chief Digital Officer, Moffitt Cancer Center
  
  
• Vikash Gupta, PhD – Senior AI and ML Solutions Architect, Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Below are the key insights leaders should focus on as AI adoption accelerates across health systems. You can view the full discussion on demand here.

AI in healthcare is real and practical today, especially for documentation and workflow automation.

Ambient tools, structured note generation, and task automation are already reducing clinical burden. As Dr. Neptune noted, “Two thirds of a provider’s time is spent in the chart and only one third of that time is actually spent with real patient direct face-to-face interaction.” Redirecting that time back to care teams is one of AI’s most immediate wins.

Take it from Dr. Burnham who’s leveraging Commure Ambient AI at Medical City Dallas, part of HCA Healthcare’s North Texas Division: “Honestly, if I didn’t have it, I’d have a hard time doing my job because of the amount of time it saves and the quality it gives me.”

Trust and transparency in models are essential for clinician adoption.

Ambient AI's success depends on clinicians' understanding what the AI is doing and why. Dr. Burnham explained how his organization builds confidence: "We implemented track changes into our notes where we can actually see what the AI added into the notes. It helps with trust, and it helps with training the model."

While ambient AI reduces documentation burden effectively, precision is critical in healthcare. As Dr. Gupta put it, "Trust is a fragile thing. In the world of AI, if your model is correct 90 percent of the time, that is a great model. In the world of healthcare, a 10 percent error rate is really bad."

A 90% accurate model forces clinicians to spend significant time correcting errors, wasting their time and eroding trust. This underscores why ambient AI solutions must be designed with healthcare-specific accuracy standards and continuous monitoring.

Change management is multi-layered and requires alignment from leadership to frontline staff.

Adoption succeeds when executive sponsorship and grassroots enthusiasm reinforce each other. Dr. Robinson captured the human side of this work: “People are not afraid of change. People are afraid of loss.” Organizations that frame AI as a tool for restoring time and reducing burden rather than replacing jobs see faster buy-in and stronger results.

EMR vendors must evolve; open standards and collaboration are critical.

Interdisciplinary AI work depends on interoperability, shared context, and real-time data availability. Closed systems slow innovation and limit value. Dr. Burham shared, “I’ve worked in EMRs where adding one line turns into 13 extra clicks. Multiply that by 20 patients… it’s exhausting.” Future-ready EMR vendors will embrace open frameworks and partner ecosystems that allow AI tools to work across workflows.

Start small, prove value, then scale; land and expand beats big-bang rollouts every time.

The panel stressed the importance of beginning with a targeted use case, measuring lift, and iterating. Continuous measurement keeps adoption honest. As Dr. Gupta said, “Ask the right kind of questions…get to a quantitative measure and that will derive some changes.”

From there, leaders can broaden the footprint of AI across service lines and functions once early wins are clear.

AI should work at the top of its license to amplify, not replace, clinical expertise.

AI’s role is to elevate clinicians by removing administrative friction and enhancing coordination, not to displace judgment. Dr. Neptune pointed to revenue integrity as one example of high-leverage impact: “If you can get your denials from 5% to 2.5%, you’re talking about fundamental impacts on the financial livelihood of the organization.”

Dr. Geoffrey Burnham added, “Clinician buy-in is key. If they see how it makes their lives easier, adoption happens naturally. 

Equity and access must remain at the center of AI’s future in healthcare.

Every advancement needs to be evaluated through the lens of patient access, equitable outcomes, and care quality. Responsible leaders build governance that ensures AI closes gaps rather than widens them, particularly for historically underserved populations. Dr. Gupta underscored this sharing, “AI has the potential to bridge that gap, but only if we design for it intentionally.”

AI in healthcare is becoming a foundational capability for documentation, operational efficiency, and care coordination. The leaders who will get the most value are those who focus on trust, transparency, interoperability, and thoughtful change management while keeping equity at the center.

Want to see the full conversation, examples, and perspectives from the panel?

‍View the Webinar on Demand

Healthcare innovation usually takes years. At the most recent Commure Nexus, we measured it in hours. Commure brought health system leaders together for a day of discussion on the future of healthcare. During the Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) Roundtable, executives broke into small groups to surface persistent challenges across the entire revenue cycle, from referral intake bottlenecks to denial backlogs.

Once the discussions wrapped up, Commure’s Forward Deployed Engineering team took those insights and immediately went to work. Over the next four hours, the team built and extended real applications directly from what they heard, combining new builds with purposeful extensions of existing Commure products. Max Krueger, Head of Forward Deployed Engineering at Commure, then took the stage to walk through what the team built and how it mapped back to the challenges raised in the room. Watch Max's full keynote here, or read below for the highlights.

Front Cycle: Reducing Friction Before Care Begins

Several of the most consistent pain points surfaced early in the revenue cycle, where manual processes and fragmented information slow both staff and patients down.

One focus area was top of cycle patient admissions and referrals. Health systems currently deploy armies of staff to manually transcribe thousands of faxed PDFs into the EHR. The team deployed AI capable of rapidly ingesting unstructured faxes and converting them into structured, actionable data. Instead of staff manually reviewing long, unstructured files, the system synthesizes key information and makes it available for downstream workflows. What had previously required human interpretation at every step becomes immediately actionable for providers at the point of care.

Another recurring theme was care navigation. Patients often rely on generic tools or external search engines to understand symptoms and next steps. In response, the FDE team configured a health system–specific AI assistant that allows patients to describe concerns in natural language and receive guidance grounded in the organization’s own knowledge bases, care pathways, and clinics. From there, patients can be routed directly to appropriate locations and scheduling workflows, preserving the health system’s clinical and brand context throughout the journey.

Transparency was the third front-cycle priority. Executives emphasized the need for patients to clearly understand their coverage, costs, and next steps. The team extended Commure’s patient engagement platform to present insurance details in patient-friendly language, pre-visit + post-visit summaries, and recommend follow-ups. By delivering this information digitally and proactively, the experience shifts away from paper-heavy processes that are often confusing and easily lost.

Mid Cycle: Bringing Financial Context into the Clinical Workflow

In the middle of the revenue cycle, conversations centered on documentation and decision support during care delivery. While many attendees were already familiar with Commure’s ambient documentation capabilities, the roundtable highlighted an opportunity to surface financial and administrative context alongside clinical insights.

The FDE team extended the ambient platform with live Awareness CareCues that provide real-time visibility into patient profiles, including insurance details and checklist-driven prompts during the encounter. These cues appear directly within the ambient workflow, giving clinicians access to information traditionally buried in disparate EHR tabs or siloed in billing software.

A key use case discussed was helping providers understand where a patient is in their financial journey, such as proximity to deductible thresholds or timing considerations that may affect care planning for patient transparency. By embedding this awareness into the ambient experience, providers gain the same visibility that front desk or billing teams typically have, without disrupting the clinical interaction.

Back Cycle: Scaling Denial Management with Language Models

On the back end of the revenue cycle, denial management emerged as a universally manual and time-intensive process. The FDE team focused on how language models can be used not just to analyze individual denials, but to address them at scale.

The solution analyzed denied claims with full historical context, categorizing based on CARC and RARC codes and prior resolution patterns. Instead of guiding billers through one-off fixes, the system identifies groups of similar claims and enables bulk resubmission across entire categories. This approach shifts denial work away from repetitive, linear processing toward high-impact intervention, allowing smaller teams to resolve large backlogs more efficiently.

What This Demonstrated About the FDE Model

These weren't slide decks or mockups. These were working applications, built in four hours, aimed squarely at the P&L initiatives discussed in the round tables. As Max emphasized, these aren't static tools; they are operational starting points for precision software.

The session highlighted what Forward Deployed Engineering is designed to do: embed engineers alongside customers, work directly from real operational constraints, and move from conversation to working software with speed. Rather than forcing organizations to adapt to static tools, the FDE approach adapts technology to the realities of healthcare delivery.

Want to learn more about Commure’s Forward Deployed Engineering model and how it works with health systems?

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In physics, "escape velocity" is the speed needed to break free from a massive body's gravitational pull. For decades, the healthcare industry has been held down by the heavy gravity of administrative bottlenecks, fragmented data, and operational inefficiencies.

2025 was the year we began removing them at scale.

With record-breaking adoption of generative AI and purpose-built automation, we are approaching escape velocity. Beyond theoretical optimisms, there is measurable acceleration in real numbers, real adoption, and real relief for clinicians across the country.

Commure now serves tens of millions of appointments with its clinical intelligence solutions, processes more than $25 billion in annualized payments, and integrates with over 60 EHRs. Agents have become a reality, and some of the nation's largest AI deployments in healthcare are well underway.

Proof Healthcare Is Rejecting the Status Quo

The demand for change is undeniable. Our growth this year proves that healthcare organizations are shedding the drag of legacy workflows and systems, and propelling themselves toward a new operating system for care.

We have moved decisively from pilot programs to enterprise-wide deployments, adding tens of thousands of clinicians to our end-to-end RCM platform this year across modular solutions. Perhaps most notably, more than 1% of all appointments in the U.S. now run on Commure Ambient AI. 

This momentum extends to our entire ecosystem. Athelas, powered by Commure, deployed the first AI-native EMR, Athelas AIR, across more than fifty practices throughout the country. With Insights, Athelas is helping practices generate more than 10% additional revenue via optimized RCM. They’ve demonstrated that scalable, repeatable AI workflows can be deployed for practices everywhere, regardless of their size or specialty. 

Our impact was further recognized when we were named to the Fortune Future 50. As one of only two healthcare technology companies on the list, we are proud to stand alongside industry shapers like Anthropic, Samsara, Palantir, and Databricks.

Solutions: Delivering the Tools Healthcare Actually Needed

Over the past year, customers drove our focus on building a unified infrastructure for an end-to-end revenue cycle, grounded in a single data model. Our modular solutions span the front, middle, and back stages of the revenue cycle. This mirrors the full patient journey, from first touch to final dollar. 

At the front of the revenue cycle, we launched Commure Agents to expand and improve patient access and intake, handling patient navigation, referrals, scheduling, and call center workflows with new efficiency. 

We made significant strides driving impact at the middle of the revenue cycle. Our Ambient AI impact was validated by the KLAS First Look report, which gave us straight ‘A’ marks across customer satisfaction, quality, and effectiveness. The most telling stat: 100% of interviewed customers stated they would buy again. Solution customization, white-glove support and responsiveness, and seamless integrations were all strengths reported by customers. We also launched Autonomous Coding to clinicians and coders valuable time by automatically generating CPT codes, ICD-10 diagnosis, and modifiers from clinical documentation.

On the backend of the revenue cycle, our RCM customers are seeing a 20% revenue lift, driven by robust charge capture, timely filing denials, and patient collection automation. We also expanded Commure Agents into RCM optimization with claims processing and denial resubmission agents.

In July, we also signed an important partnership that brings the benefits of Strongline staff safety, powered by Canopy, to more customers to jointly protect over 350,000 clinicians.

Customer Impact: The Only Scoreboard That Matters

The true measure of our success is the time returned to care providers.

Across HCA Healthcare, we are deployed broadly with Ambient, supporting clinicians across multiple regions. At Medical City Dallas (HCA Healthcare), we are handling over 5,000 notes per week via Ambient AI. This has resulted in an 18% reduction in H&P documentation time, restoring critical hours back to the clinicians’ week. The impact of these efforts is being realized across Medical City in North Texas, where Ambient AI is being utilized by nearly 200 providers. 

Compassus is using Ambient AI documentation across over 1,500 clinicians, seeing 70% time savings and 70% adoption in home health IDG note workflows. As one user put it, the solution has "given them their Saturdays back." 

Ob Hospitalist Group (OBHG) is rolling out our Autonomous Coding solution enterprise wide to over 2,000 clinicians at 200 sites. Within months of launching Commure’s technology at pilot sites, the organization saw 85%+ of charges coded using AI and an 83% reduction in clinician time spent entering charges. 

At North East Medical Services (NEMS), the shift was described as "keyboard liberation," while Val Verde Regional Medical Center is proving that rural systems extend their capacity with the right tools. From establishing a major platform partnership with the Hughston Clinic for orthopedics to streamlining physical therapy workflows, the results are consistent: when you remove the administrative burden, care improves.

Forward Deployed Engineering: The Last-Mile Difference

Standard software rollouts in healthcare are often slow, painful, and disconnected from clinical reality. We chose a different path: Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE).

Rather than building from a distance, our FDE teams embed onsite alongside clinicians. This replaces slow, abstract feedback loops with real-time iteration. Working shoulder-to-shoulder with providers, our engineers identify and solve the problems that surface in the moment. This ensures our solutions perform in the complexity of live clinical environments, not just controlled testing conditions.

Customers consistently point to FDE as a decisive reason they partner with us. It is the difference between software that technically works and systems that hold up under real-world care delivery.

In 2025 alone, FDEs travelled more than 500,000 miles on airplanes–or the equivalent of nearly 20 times around the circumference of Earth–bringing engineers to the point of care.

Partnerships: The Network Effects Begin

This year, we meaningfully advanced our strategic alliances, enabling broader deployments across some of the nation’s largest healthcare providers and creating tangible network effects for our customers. 

Our partnership with AWS continues to deepen. It strengthens the reliability of our infrastructure at scale while unlocking frontier AI capabilities across speech recognition and generative AI. By leveraging advanced models, including multiple Claude-on-Bedrock variants, we are delivering strong performance and offering health systems greater flexibility in implementation, integration, and scaling.

We also advanced our alliance with MEDITECH to make ambient documentation a fully native experience within MEDITECH Expanse and Expanse Now. This work reflects a shared commitment to embedding AI directly into clinical workflows, now serving over twenty MEDITECH provider groups, from the largest private health system in the country (HCA) to vital rural healthcare providers like Val Verde.

Through our integration with Epic Toolbox, we are expanding our ability to meet clinicians where they already work. We were especially proud to be one of a small group of select vendor partners invited by Epic to participate in Epic UGM 2025. Commure is fortunate to work alongside Epic teams to deliver the latest in healthcare AI to our mutual enterprise partners. 

Ease of adoption and speed to scale remain central to our partnership strategy. Our collaboration with Vizient helps health systems across the U.S. more efficiently assess, diligence, contract, and deploy our Ambient AI technology. This partnership reduces friction and accelerates access for thousands of member hospitals.

Beyond corporate alliances, we are seeing a community form around a new vision of healthcare operations. Our Nexus events served as a gathering place for forward-thinking leaders shaping the future of healthcare, bringing together over 110+ health executives across the ecosystem.

Breaking Barriers in 2026

The administrative burden is no longer a law of nature; it is a solvable engineering problem.

Our mission remains unchanged: build the AI infrastructure that eliminates the documentation burden, brings patients and providers closer together, automates revenue, and transforms healthcare end to end. In 2025, we saw clear signs of approaching escape velocity. In 2026, we cross it: making AI the infrastructure healthcare finally depends on.

Tell us a little bit about yourself—what do you like to do outside of work?

Outside of work, most of my joy comes from spending time with my boys. One is studying Audio Engineering at Berklee College of Music here in Boston, and my younger son is anxiously awaiting decisions from his top-choice universities, where he plans to study Electrical Engineering. Watching both of them grow into their own interests has been one of the most rewarding parts of my life.

I love to cook, travel when possible, and spend time with friends. I enjoy a good laugh (usually at my own expense), and I’m drawn to anything that supports personal growth, wellness, and meditation. Those practices keep me grounded and balanced.

As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I always knew I wanted to work in healthcare. For a long time, I thought I would become a Physician Assistant. That early interest is what led me to pursue a clinical degree in Medical Technology (now Clinical Laboratory Science). That clinical foundation and early exposure to patient care have stayed with me throughout my career.

Describe a day in the life of your role.

Every day in this role is different, which is part of what keeps it exciting. As an enterprise salesperson in healthcare IT, my work is a blend of strategy, discovery, and problem-solving.

Selling at Commure requires understanding how clinical workflows, documentation, and revenue cycle processes connect and how technology can strengthen each of those areas. It’s a complex environment and the primary revenue engine of a health system, which makes it critical to get right. Connecting those dots is what allows me to translate real-world challenges into clear conversations about the impact our solutions can have.

I work remotely, so I sometimes miss the energy of the office, but staying close to my clients and the problems they’re trying to solve keeps the work meaningful and energizing.

What made you decide to join Commure?

My career has always lived where healthcare and technology meet. I started on the clinical side, earned my ASCP certification, and during my internship at UMass Medical was pulled into implementing a new lab system. Seeing how technology could transform care changed my entire path, and I never went back to my original plan of PA school.

I’ve spent most of my career in healthcare IT startups, including a Meditech spinoff that ultimately became part of Cerner and a payment-review startup that was acquired by McKesson. Those experiences taught me how much I enjoy environments where I’m solving big problems and building the next generation of healthcare solutions. After years in startup roles, I’ve taken on everything from hands-on operational work to supporting higher-level strategy, which tends to happen when you’re in a place where jumping in is both needed and rewarded.

What drew me to Commure was the combination of the technology, the talent behind it, and a product direction that genuinely moves the needle. Ambient, in particular, is one of the first products I’ve seen in a long time that truly changes what’s possible for clinicians and sets the foundation for real transformation across the revenue cycle. Being part of that kind of work feels both familiar and energizing, like the best parts of every startup I’ve ever been part of, but with a far greater opportunity to impact healthcare at scale.

How would you describe the Commure company culture?

Commure has a fast-paced, mission-driven culture with a strong emphasis on ownership, curiosity, and focus. People come from a wide range of clinical, technical, and operational backgrounds, which creates a collaborative environment where diverse perspectives come together to solve complex problems. It’s an environment that values tenacity, the kind of place where you can take on meaningful challenges, push boundaries, and help shape how technology improves healthcare.

What advice would you give someone on their first day at Commure?

Be curious, ask questions, and jump in quickly. Things move fast here, and the best way to get up to speed is to engage with different teams and understand how the pieces fit together. Build relationships early, stay open to learning, and don’t be afraid to take ownership of big problems. This is a company that rewards initiative and welcomes people who want to make a real impact.

What has been your greatest accomplishment so far at Commure?

Contributing to the commercialization of Autonomous Coding has been incredibly fulfilling. AC sits at the intersection of clinical documentation, provider workflows, and the revenue cycle, and helping bring a product of that complexity to market and ultimately securing our first major client has been a highlight of my time here.

Autonomous Coding, in many ways, is the downstream benefit of the sophisticated machine learning work behind our Ambient product. The depth of clinical language understanding built into Ambient is what enables AC to reach the level of accuracy and reliability we’re targeting. That clarity makes it easier to position, explain, and introduce this technology in a way that resonates with health systems.

What’s been most meaningful is helping connect three capabilities that have never existed in one platform: high-accuracy Autonomous Coding; real-time provider support through Ambient to improve documentation at the source; and the operational depth of the Athelas RCM platform. Seeing those pieces come together to create new levels of clarity and efficiency in the revenue cycle has been incredibly rewarding.

Interested in a career building the next generation of healthcare technology powered by AI? We are always looking for talented people across our departments.

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When we surveyed 25 CIOs, CHIOs, CTOs, and digital transformation leaders from major health systems, I expected a wide range of perspectives on AI. What I didn’t expect from our survey of CHIME (The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives) members was how consistent the responses would be. Two numbers in particular stood out: 66.7 percent of these leaders said revenue cycle coding is their most pressing operational gap, and 62.5 percent say ambient scribing is the main place AI is delivering ROI today.

Taken together, the survey results and a follow-up focus group discussion suggest that ambient AI adoption is the tip of the iceberg; an early signal of an industry that is optimistic about AI’s potential to address its most persistent operational challenges, starting with documentation and coding. What I heard from these leaders echoes what I see every week in my work with health systems across the country: AI succeeds when it respects provider and administrative workflows, integrates cleanly, and solves problems that have frustrated clinicians and revenue cycle teams for years.

‍The Pain Points Are Clear And Persistent

The top operational needs identified by survey respondents were remarkably aligned. Coding led the list by a wide margin at 66.7 percent, followed by denials management (41.7 percent), patient scheduling (37.5 percent), chart summarization (37.5 percent), and prior authorization (29.2 percent).

These pain points aren’t new, and that in itself is telling. Health systems have invested heavily in EHRs, workflow tools, and process redesign. But the underlying issues (operational complexity, information fragmentation, and the administrative weight placed on clinicians) continue to be a challenge. During the focus group discussion, multiple leaders described the burden of keeping disparate tools connected and the frustration clinicians feel when they are forced to jump in and out of systems that don’t talk to each other. As one participant put it, “copy-and-paste is not integration.” And they’re right.

What resonated with me most as a physician was the feeling that many of these challenges aren’t purely technical. Many of these issues are “change management” challenges that involve human and organizational behavior that can be resistant to change.

Where AI Is Working Today

AI is already delivering meaningful value in several key areas. According to the survey, ambient scribing leads the way, with 62.5 percent of leaders reporting positive ROI. Auto-coding (29.2 percent) and revenue cycle automation (20.8 percent) are also gaining traction, with smaller but notable signals in patient messaging automation and chart summarization (16.7 percent each).

None of this surprised me. In our focus group, leader after leader described ambient scribing as the first technology that clinicians find useful and empowering (respondents reported being actively thanked by clinicians for implementing the technology). Some struggled to recruit providers into their early pilots and now have a thousand clinicians using the solution. Others noted that while time-in-chart may not drop as dramatically as vendors promise, the benefits show up elsewhere (more patients seen per day, higher RVUs, more notes closed within 24 hours, and less burnout).

AI doesn’t always generate ROI in the categories we expect, but it consistently reduces cognitive load and gives clinicians the breathing room they’ve needed for years. Clinicians can reinvest that time into catching up on patient messages, reviewing charts, spending more time with patients in the exam room, or relaxing with their families.

The Barriers Ahead: Integration, Trust, and the EHR Black Hole

The survey reinforced an industry reality: 87.5 percent of health systems look to their EHR vendor first when evaluating new technology. At the same time, 70.8 percent prioritize integration ability, and 75 percent prioritize product strength when selecting a vendor.

This dynamic surfaced repeatedly in our focus group. Leaders are open to innovation, with 62.5 percent saying they are willing to adopt best-in-class solutions, but only if those tools integrate seamlessly into existing workflows. Several participants said that once a non-EHR tool is added, it becomes hard to unwind, which makes organizations risk-averse. Others shared frustration that EHR roadmaps for certain vendors often lag behind operational needs, tying their hands and limiting the pace of innovation.

This is not resistance to AI; it is a reminder that technology must fit the ecosystem in which clinicians already live. Trust is built when tools feel native, predictable, and safe. Anything that adds clicks, toggles, or uncertainty will struggle to find adoption, no matter how sophisticated the underlying algorithms are.

‍Where Leaders Want AI to Go Next

The most energizing part of the focus group was the future leaders described. Many want real-time, context-aware decision support that draws from the conversation in the room, the patient’s history, and clinical guidelines, surfacing insights during the visit, not after. Others are focused on the patient journey, especially the friction points during referrals, care transitions, and post-acute coordination.

Several organizations are investing in enterprise data warehouses or data lakes, hoping to make decades of clinical and financial data accessible for the next generation of AI tools. Leaders are also seeing early wins in operational AI, optimizing the OR schedule, reducing overtime in the ED, and triaging stroke patients more quickly.

The common thread is that they don’t want isolated tools. They want AI that understands their systems, their patients, and their workflows from end to end. The Commure platform focuses on this end-to-end experience, helping provider organizations deliver higher-quality care at a lower cost.

The Path Forward

The next phase of AI adoption will be focused on execution and the implementation of new technologies into existing service lines. We have seen early wins in ambient scribing and coding automation, and those technologies will be a foundation for what comes next. In order to solve pain points across the entire patient journey, we will need tighter integration, better data foundations, and tools that fit naturally into clinical workflows.

If we stay focused on those fundamentals, AI can reduce friction across the system, strengthen revenue management, and give clinicians time back without adding new layers of complexity. The survey and focus group made one thing clear: health systems are ready to move forward. Our job at Commure is to continue building the technology and the partnerships that make that progress possible.

Tell us a little bit about yourself—what do you like to do outside of work?

My family and I moved to Denver last year. I have a 2-year-old daughter and a 2-month-old son, so my life revolves around whatever they need. We relocated from Arizona to be closer to family (I have a brother and sister here and they are both married with kids!). Outside of work, we try to be as active as we can. Getting out and exploring Colorado and trying to coordinate as much as we can with friends and family in the area. 

As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I grew up in a competitive environment. I am the oldest of 5 (our family consists of 2 brothers followed by 2 sisters). Our lives had always been sports and I never imagined myself doing anything outside of that. My brothers and I all played football through college while my sisters competed in cross country through school. Because of this I always imagined myself as an athlete.

Describe a day in the life of your role.

Every day is different. I support a region of account executives who, for the most part, all come from clinical backgrounds. I am on calls most of the day, ranging from sales calls across the deal cycle where I am leading and/or supporting my team, strategic leadership discussions, collaboration across internal divisions, and also packing a bag and going to meet face-to-face onsite with groups!

What made you decide to join Commure?

I spent the better part of 2 years after I finished my MBA networking to find out what was next for my career. I explored everything you could imagine. I have a PT background and wanted to move more into the business side. I met Greg Martinez, who had really just started to get the clinical motion going here at Athelas-Commure, and it was really a quick no-brainer. I couldn't afford not to take the risk after seeing where the company was, where it's going, and the people involved. I had to be a part of it. 

How would you describe the Commure company culture?

It’s about the people. We have such a strong foundation in leadership. We understand the opportunity we have here to push this industry forward, we align on “why” we are doing what we are doing, and we have built so much trust together.

What advice would you give someone on their first day at Commure?

Keep moving. Ask all the questions because there is never enough time to learn it all. Lean on your leaders.

Interested in a career building the next generation of healthcare technology powered by AI? We are always looking for talented people across our departments.

Explore Career Opportunities

The reasons obstetricians chose medicine have little to do with the administrative demands that now dominate the clinical day. Documentation, coding, regulatory training, and the accumulating obligations of the electronic record have steadily encroached on the time clinicians can devote to their patients.

At Ob Hospitalist Group (OBHG), where more than 2,000 clinicians deliver vital women’s health services across the country, this growing imbalance has become increasingly difficult to sustain. That’s why OBHG’s adoption of Commure’s Autonomous Coding marks a decisive shift to restoring time, precision, and focus they need at the point of care. And for clinicians like Dr. Jana Thor, an OB/GYN hospitalist with OBHG, the impact has been both immediate and profound.

“Anything That Gives Us Time Back for Patient Care Is an Asset”

Like many physicians, Dr. Thor approached artificial intelligence in healthcare with hesitation.

“I was skeptical about AI in the clinical setting at first,” she admits. “But Autonomous Coding has been eye-opening. It doesn’t replace physicians or what we do. With the shortage we’re facing as clinicians, anything that saves us time so we can focus on patient care is an asset.”

For years, her coding workflow reflected the same frustrations expressed by clinicians across every specialty: manually entering patient identifiers; searching repeatedly for codes already documented; clicking through fields to supply information already contained elsewhere in the chart; and duplicating work that felt both inefficient and inescapable.

“My old workflow was painful,” she recalls. “Before you could even get to the coding, you had to manually enter the medical record number, date of birth, patient name. Even when your note was detailed and included diagnoses codes, you still had to hunt them down again.”

A Streamlined, Documentation-First Workflow

Commure’s Autonomous Coding fundamentally reshapes that experience. The system interprets clinical documentation (including CPT codes, ICD-10 diagnoses, and modifiers) and uses proprietary AI to autonomously generate the appropriate charge in seconds. What once required extensive manual entry and cross-checking now happens as a natural extension of the physician’s documentation workflow.

“Autonomous Coding has taken all of that and put it into a streamlined process,” Dr. Thor says. “It saves time. It saves clicks. It eliminates duplicate work. I don’t ever see going backwards. It’s a game changer for our workflow and practice.”

Her experience reflects OBHG’s broader results. Within months of launching Commure’s technology at pilot sites, the organization saw:

• 85%+ of charges coded using AI

• An 83% reduction in clinician time spent entering charges

• Improved accuracy through identification of codes clinicians may have missed manually

For frontline physicians, the value is felt moments regained and cognitive load reduced.

A Future Built on Clinician Time and Clinical Excellence

The accelerating demands of modern medicine are not easily reversed. But with the right infrastructure, they can be rebalanced. OBHG’s deployment of Autonomous Coding demonstrates what is possible when technology is shaped around clinicians rather than the other way around. The result is elevated accuracy, efficiency, and the centrality of patient care.

Autonomous Coding is a critical link in a larger, end-to-end revenue cycle workflow that’s part of the patient journey. Paired with Commure Engage and Ambient AI at the front end and supported by the back-end intelligence of Commure RCM, it forms a unified chain from clinical conversation to coded, optimized claim. This cohesion is what transforms isolated gains in efficiency into system-level improvement for patients, clinicians, and operations.

Learn more about the Commure’s partnership with Ob Hospitalist Group.