Reclaiming 20% of Staff Time: What Practices Can Do with the Hours AI Frees Up

🎨Let me paint a quick picture…

Your front-desk coordinator just spent 45 minutes digging through charts, entering data, chasing down missing records. Your billing specialist just slogged through a stack of claims, manually coding and checking. Your clinical team spent their post-clinic hour finalizing notes, chasing labs, fixing errors.

What would it mean if that drag — that “busy work” — vanished? I’m not talking magic. I’m talking AI. And more specifically, reclaiming 20% of staff time (or more) to do higher-value work, reduce burnout, and improve patient flow.

This week, we dig into how medical practices can convert those freed hours into meaningful business and care improvements — without turning into tech zealots.

🗣️ The Problem: Why administrative burden is the silent productivity leech

Here’s the dirty secret most medical practices don’t admit: your staff is drowning in low-value tasks. The kind of repetitive data entry, documentation, claims checks, error corrections, and chart chasing that people loathe, but nobody tracks as a “profit killer.”

Why is this so insidious?

• Because it’s the undercurrent, not the headline. You don’t see “we lost 10% productivity” — you see “John was late finishing notes again,” “claims backlog piling,” “overtime needed.”

• Because staff moral wears down slowly. When your coordinators and coders see their time eaten up by grunt tasks, motivation declines, errors creep in, turnover rises.

• Because while revenue-generating work (seeing patients, follow-up calls, outreach) is what moves the needle — it often loses out to the urgent pile of low-value admin.

Here’s the punch: many practices aren’t even trying to quantify this drag. They treat it as “just how things are.” But with modern AI tools, you can reclaim a meaningful chunk of that time.

📋 Research-Backed Evidence: Yes, AI can free up real time (but there are caveats)

Before we get to strategies, let’s ground this in evidence. Because you (and your staff) deserve claims backed by data — not hype.

A. Ambient AI scribes and the documentation gains

One of the most compelling cases is The Permanente Medical Group. They deployed ambient AI scribes (tools that listen to physician–patient conversations and auto-draft notes) and measured this result:

Over one year, those scribes saved physicians 15,791 hours of documentation time — equivalent to 1,794 workdays. American Medical Association
The deployment also reduced after-hours “pajama time,” improved physician satisfaction, and reportedly improved patient–physician interactions. Permanente Medicine

If that scale works in a large system, imagine what you can do in a midsize practice.

B. Broader AI & workflow efficiency in health

The OECD, in a 2024 report, projected that AI could free up time for healthcare professionals to focus on patient care by automating repetitive tasks like charting, billing, and scheduling. OECD

Pavuluri et al. (2024) describe how task automation allows professionals to focus more on core care and improved response times. PMC

And Harvard points out that AI is already being used to “automate tasks, improve diagnoses, free clinicians for patient focus, and provide data for clinical decisions.” Harvard Medical School Learning

However — a caution: some pilot implementations don’t always yield uniform results. For instance, a study at Atrium Health saw modest overall time savings when deploying ambient scribe tools — the gains were concentrated among certain clinicians and visit types. Peterson Health Technology Institute

So yes — AI has serious promise, but the yield depends heavily on how you deploy it, train people, and choose use cases.

📈 Practical Insights & Strategies: What to do with the reclaimed 20% (or more)

Let’s drop the theory. Here’s your playbook for turning AI time-savings into real value in your practice.

Step A: Baseline & target

1. Pick a unit (front desk, billing, clinical documentation) and measure “hours spent / week on non-revenue tasks.”

2. Set a target: reclaim 15–25% of that admin load over 3–6 months.

3. Choose a few prime candidate tasks (e.g. note writing, claims coding, record chasing, patient data entry) to pilot AI or automation.

You can’t get 20% back across all departments overnight — start where the lift is easiest.

Step B: Choose the right AI / automation tools

• For clinical documentation: ambient AI scribes (e.g. tools that passively record and draft notes) are a leading candidate. Physicians then review/edit drafts rather than writing from scratch.

• For billing / coding / claims: AI-powered coders or claim-auto processors can reduce manual coding time, flag errors, or auto-match payer rules.

• For data entry / form population: intelligent assistants that auto-fill patient demographics, merge records, verify insurance data.

• For workflow & routing automation: bots that move tasks between staff, trigger checks, escalate claims, and send reminders.

The key is: the AI must assist, not replace. The human in the loop remains essential, especially in healthcare.

Step C: Process redesign + staff alignment

You can’t drop AI into the existing mess and expect miracles. You’ll need:

• Workflow mapping: redraw how tasks flow, identify handoffs, and eliminate redundant steps.

• Staff training + incentives: make AI adoption a performance goal, reward teams for process improvements.

• Governance and auditing: review AI-draft outputs (notes, codes) for accuracy, adjust thresholds, feedback loops.

• Pilot small, iterate fast: test in a department or with a subset of physicians, refine, then expand.

Step D: Redeploy the freed time strategically

Once you reclaim time, what do you do with it? Here are high-leverage options:

• Focus on patient experience: proactive outreach, patient follow-ups, care coordination.

• Quality improvement / process optimization: your team can audit bottlenecks, fix recurrent errors, refine workflows.

• Staff development / training: use the time for cross-training, upskilling, or internal projects.

• Marketing / retention work: referral follow-up, patient communication, scheduling outreach.

• Reduce overtime / burnout buffer: give back time to staff, reduce after-hours work, and lower turnover.

Step E: Measure, monitor, and iterate

• Track time saved (by task, by staff member) vs. baseline.

• Monitor quality metrics: error rates, revision rates, patient satisfaction.

• Seek feedback from staff frequently: what’s working, what’s frustrating, where is “AI friction.”

• Adjust which tasks remain human vs AI as you calibrate.

Over time you may well exceed 20% in some departments — but even that 20% is gold.

✅ Conclusion

Look — AI isn’t a band-aid. It’s a lever. If you use it just to tinker, you’ll get trickles. But if you build your processes and mindset around it, you can unlock real, meaningful hours each week.

Reclaiming 20% of staff time doesn’t just mean cost savings. It means more breathing room for better care, less burnout, stronger patient engagement, and smarter growth.

Yes, there are implementation risks (tool mismatch, adoption gaps, accuracy issues) — but you mitigate those by starting small, iterating, and keeping humans in the loop.

If you treat AI like a strategic partner — not a magic switch — you might just change what “productivity” means in your practice. And that’s how smart practices will outpace the rest.

✍️About the Author

David “D14” DeSchoolmeester is a U.S. Navy Disabled Veteran, Author, and the Founder of D14 Agency LLC and Forever Practice. With decades of leadership experience, David helps private medical practices grow sustainably by leveraging AI-powered automation, Fractional CMO strategy, and patient engagement systems that reduce staff burnout while increasing revenue.

Through his work with physicians and practice owners, David has developed the 9-Step Forever Practice Coaching framework — a model designed to help practices thrive long-term without overreliance on outside agencies.

👉 To learn more about how D14 Agency and Forever Practice help practice owners take back control of their time and build lasting growth, visit https://d14agency.com or https://foreverpractice.com.