Priti Patel, MD, CMIO, John Muir Health, is steering a measured expansion of AI from long-running predictive models to newer generative tools, pairing administrative relief with cautious governance and education for clinicians and patients. Under her direction, the system has deployed ambient scribing across ambulatory practices and is extending that footprint to inpatient and emergency settings while evaluating voice agents for call centers and care navigation.

This interview was conducted as part of our recently published Special Report on AI 

Early AI investments at the Walnut Creek–based health system centered on risk prediction — clinical deterioration on inpatient units, opioid risk scoring and readmission risk — before pivoting in the last two years toward generative tools that reduce documentation burden. Patel described how ambient scribing, launched in ambulatory clinics, has cut after-hours work and improved the patient visit experience. “Now all of our physicians in the ambulatory setting are able to utilize ambient AI for their visits,” she said, noting the program is expanding to inpatient units and the ED.

As that footprint grows, she is widening the use beyond physicians. Patel is assessing opportunities for nursing, case management, nutrition services and revenue cycle teams, where drafting denial letters, appeals and prior-authorization materials consumes valuable time. She also is piloting simple automations for call-center tasks such as scheduling and medication refills, with an eye toward easing access and standardizing service levels.



Adoption, Training and Human-in-the-Loop

Securing adoption has required segmenting the medical staff and letting data do the persuading. Patel said roughly a third of clinicians embraced ambient scribing immediately, while a “middle third” responded once they saw comparative metrics on documentation time and after-hours work. To support safe use, she is embedding basic AI literacy into training — what the tools do, how they produce text, and why outputs must be reviewed. “With any technology, the end user requires the why, the support, and then the ongoing feedback on how things are going,” she said.

Chart summarization and inbox assistance are next on the roadmap. Patel expects those features to help clinicians rapidly surface relevant history and draft patient messages, though she emphasizes a human-in-the-loop standard. She and her team track tell-tale signals — such as how often physicians edit generated drafts — to ensure users remain engaged reviewers rather than passive approvers. In her telling, this is both a safety practice and a change-management tool: visible, iterative improvement builds confidence.

Pilots, Momentum and Governance

Managing the pace of experimentation has become a strategic question. She has seen how disappointing early experiences can drain momentum — especially among previously enthusiastic “champions” — and make later re-engagement difficult. Patel’s remedy is to cap the number of simultaneous pilots, reserving trials for offerings that are clearly not yet mature, while moving straight to broader rollouts for proven solutions already working in peer organizations. “Pilots are very resource-intensive, time-intensive, and require a lot of collaboration between teams,” she said, adding that too many at once can exhaust scarce clinical time and trust.

That posture aligns with John Muir Health’s identity as a community-based system willing to lead selectively. Patel will back first-mover efforts when they target high-priority problems — burnout and documentation burden drove the early ambient-scribe push — but she otherwise prefers to be a fast follower, drawing on the experiences of academic centers and innovation programs.