Inside physician engagement: When AI helps — and when it hurts

Bill Heller, chief operating officer at CHG Healthcare, unpacks one of the most striking tensions in the 2025 Physician Sentiment Survey: physicians are optimistic about artificial intelligence (AI), but deeply skeptical about how it will be used.

Most physicians believe AI can improve efficiency and help address documentation and administrative burden. At the same time, far fewer think those gains will translate into more time with patients. Instead, many worry efficiency will simply be converted into higher patient volumes, intensifying the very pressures AI is supposed to relieve.

Heller says that tension explains why physicians are pushing so hard to have a real voice in technology decisions. Physicians aren’t resistant to AI itself. They’re wary of how leaders might deploy it without physician input, prioritizing throughput over care quality and autonomy.

What physicians want, Heller explains, is straightforward: tools that reduce friction and restore time for patient care. They see AI as a potential way to reverse years of incremental burden that have pulled them away from the work that brought them into medicine in the first place.

The takeaway for leaders is clear. If AI is introduced as a top-down productivity lever, it risks eroding trust and engagement. If it’s implemented with physicians at the table — with clear guardrails around workload, expectations and patient time — it can become a genuine engagement tool rather than another source of strain.