More Wisconsin Healthcare Providers Turning to AI

Tuesday, June 16th, 2026 -- 12:01 PM

(Lorin Cox, Wisconsin Public Radio) More and more Wisconsin healthcare providers are turning to artificial intelligence.

A recent survey from the American Medical Association found that more than 80 percent of physicians now use some form of AI in their practice, more than double the rate from a 2023 version of the same survey.

The most common uses they reported were for taking notes and summarizing medical research, but some use it to assist with diagnosing from test results or drafting messages to patients.

Dr. Brooke Crotty is an internal medicine physician and interim president for Inception Health, the innovation arm of Froedtert ThedaCare in Wisconsin. She told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that AI note-taking, called ambient scribe technology, helps doctors and nurses be more attentive to their patients and spend less time focused on typing into their computers.

“The new AI scribes are able to be unobtrusive and invisible in the exam room, to take notes and help provide the clinician with a summary of the medical encounter,” Dr. Crotty said. “We’ve seen studies where we’ve seen more eye contact, and generally it has really helped clinicians and patients feel that it’s helping them.”

Health systems are also using AI agents to connect with patients between visits. Dr. Crotty said the technology can do outreach to schedule patients for tests or screenings they might need, or it can touch base with a patient after a procedure or hospitalization.

“As a patient, you may be called by an AI agent who’s there to check in on you, ask questions, make sure that you’re recovering or doing well according to your care plan,” Dr. Crotty said. “If anything seems out of ordinary or off track, they can then route that to a human care team member who can then pick up the connection.”

The AI technology is not perfect. The two biggest concerns that Dr. Crotty watches for are AI hallucinations, when the technology provides wrong information, and AI sycophancy, which is when a chat bot is too agreeable and takes the user’s side when it should be disagreeing and pushing back.

She sees the technology continuing to improve in these areas, but it’s why she believes these tools need to be used with the guidance of a professional caregiver and aren’t here to replace clinicians.

“I think we’re going to co-evolve with AI over the next decade or so, where AI is part of the care team and part of the care process, but it is just that: It’s part of a broader process. It’s not a standalone service,” Dr. Crotty said. “I think the goal of any health care information technology is that it improves the health of the people in our population, and it keeps them safe.”

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