Jefferson Metropolis Medical Group, one of many largest multispecialty healthcare supplier organizations in mid-Missouri, is utilizing AI to handle conferences, streamline medical documentation, and optimize supplier workflows. One space the place the physician-owned and independently operated healthcare group is treading rigorously: utilizing AI in its contact heart.
“The factor that we take into consideration in healthcare is compassion,” stated Aaron Hendrickson, CIO of JCMG, which incorporates 125 medical healthcare professionals and 600 staff, and serves over 70,000 sufferers. Certainly, the human contact is central to JCMG’s mission to supply patient-centered care, and its employees has “many differing opinions” Â about how AI is used.
“If you begin going absolutely digital and you do not have folks [in your contact center], you’ll be able to run into a problem there the place sufferers say, ‘Oh, I name into JCMG and I by no means speak to anybody,'” Hendrickson stated. Â
Balancing AI and Human Interplay
Whereas AI is not presently deployed in JCMG’s contact heart, Hendrickson stated he sees future alternatives for utilizing the expertise to help each the assistance desk and stay brokers with name dealing with and different operations. Â Â However “there must be a line within the sand there someplace,” he added, in order that sufferers can nonetheless attain a stay particular person to debate their healthcare wants.
Hendrickson caught up with InformationWeek at Cisco’s latest WebexOne occasion in San Diego, the place he talked about how JCMG is utilizing AI and Cisco applied sciences, together with Webex and Cisco telephones, as a part of its digital transformation.
He stated he believes the “No. 1 use case” for AI on the group will in the end be its integration into the system’s unified communications (UC) platform. However the timing of when JCMG makes use of AI for each part in its UC suite can be as much as the group’s healthcare professionals, who play a central position in deciding the place to spend money on AI and different applied sciences that help the healthcare group’s employees.
“We now have healthcare professionals  that say we have to use AI for affected person engagement — so, for instance, utilizing AI for speaking lab outcomes again to a affected person so the supplier or clinician does not should,” he stated. “There’s a whole lot of completely different use instances on the market.”
Strict Protocol for Getting AI Purchase-In
JCMG follows a structured course of for deploying any new expertise to help its physicians. Hendrickson’s IT group works intently with an IT committee that features 5 healthcare practitioners from differing specialties. This IT committee opinions demos of recent applied sciences and offers suggestions to the IT group. After the evaluation and approval of a brand new expertise, JCMG’s healthcare practitioners can nonetheless select whether or not  to decide in or out of utilizing instruments.
Some crucial enterprise applied sciences, corresponding to cybersecurity options, are deployed extensively throughout the group, whereas some productiveness instruments, for instance, are elective for physicians to make use of. Hendrickson defined that some elective applied sciences, like ambient listening, are billed again to the suppliers.
Ambient listening is a device that leverages AI to hurry up the method of submitting affected person charts. Physicians document their conversations with sufferers, and the ambient listening expertise then connects to a third-party AI function to create a transcript of the dialog.
Whereas some medical doctors have chosen to decide out of utilizing the expertise, the case for ambient listening was comparatively clear-cut for a lot of of JCMG’s physicians : “In the event you’re documenting in actual time, then your work/life steadiness is there as a result of the doctor, on the finish of the day, is not having to take a seat down and sort out a bunch of notes,” Hendrickson stated. “They wrap up their day, spend time with their household, they usually’re pleased.”
The adoption follows broader business tendencies. In line with a survey by athenahealth, 68% of physicians elevated their use of AI for medical documentation this 12 months, with 48% of physicians   citing “improved medical documentation” as the largest potential good thing about utilizing AI in healthcare. Nevertheless, 61% of physicians reported issues that AI may scale back human interplay with sufferers. These findings stemmed from athenahealth’s 2025 Doctor Sentiment Survey, which surveyed 1,001 physicians nationwide.
AI for Managing Conferences
Along with medical documentation, JCMG makes use of AI to spice up assembly productiveness. The group presently makes use of the Cisco AI Assistant options for Webex-based conferences, which give AI-generated assembly summaries, motion gadgets, search choices, and extra.
Hendrickson defined that the Webex Suite additionally works effectively in conditions the place the JCMG group is having a gathering with exterior events utilizing applied sciences corresponding to Zoom, Microsoft Groups, or Google Meet. (Cisco stated Zoom on Cisco units can be usually obtainable later this 12 months.) Â Â
Bob Laliberte, principal analyst specializing in networking and observability at The Dice Analysis, weighing in on the Cisco occasion, famous that the corporate’s give attention to interoperability is a giant a part of its technique.Â
“Cisco underscored that openness is not a speaking level however a product precept. Clients ought to have the ability to use third-party purposes, run them wherever crucial (cloud, on-premises, or sovereign), and nonetheless entry new AI options,” Laliberte stated.
As to when JCMG will use AI in all areas of its UC, that is as much as the group’s physicians, Hendrickson stated.
“Realizing once we’re prepared is kind of when our physicians are able to make that step,” he stated. “We all know we have to do it. We all know it may possibly add a whole lot of worth to our group.”
*Editor’s word: Cisco offered journey and lodging for the Cisco WebexOne occasion in San Diego.
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