Abridge and Patient Square sit on different buying paths. Abridge describes an enterprise ambient AI platform for healthcare organizations and asks prospective buyers to contact its team. Patient Square publishes per-clinician Practice Copilot plans for practices that want an ambient scribe, with Patient Square EHR included from the Copilot tier or an alongside path for an existing EHR.
That does not make either route automatically better. It changes the questions you should ask. A health system may care most about deployment governance and a negotiated agreement. An independent practice may care more about seeing the price, running a short clinical test, and knowing how to leave with its records.
This guide does not use third-party Abridge price estimates or rankings. It gives you a comparison method you can take into both sales conversations.
Key takeaways
- Ask Abridge for a current written quote. Its reviewed public pages do not display a per-clinician list price.
- Compare the unit, contract term, included modules, implementation, support, taxes, renewal, and exit terms.
- Patient Square publishes its current per-clinician plans. Check the pricing page before relying on any number here.
- Patient Square does not promise a named-EHR integration, write-back, or automatic filing.
- Test both products with the same visit types and the same scoring sheet.
Start with the buying path
Abridge’s current site leads with an enterprise platform and a Contact Us route. That tells a buyer to expect a conversation and a tailored proposal. It does not tell you what your quote will contain.
Get the commercial terms in one document. At minimum, ask for:
| Quote item | Question to put in writing |
|---|---|
| Price unit | Is the fee per clinician, user, encounter, location, or organization? |
| Term | Is the commitment monthly, annual, or multi-year? |
| Modules | Which documentation, coding, revenue-cycle, or other modules are included? |
| Implementation | What work is required from the vendor, the EHR vendor, and your team? |
| Support | Which support hours and response targets are included? |
| Taxes and fees | What can appear beyond the subscription or contract price? |
| Renewal | Does the price change at renewal, and how much notice is required? |
| Exit | How do you export data, and what happens after termination? |
This worksheet is more useful than a market estimate. A number without its unit, scope, and term is not a comparable price.
Check what the public price includes
Patient Square currently publishes three US tiers. Assist is a $79 per-clinician monthly equivalent on annual billing or $99 month to month. Copilot is $119 on the same annual-billing basis or $149 month to month. Autopilot is $199 on the annual-billing basis or $249 month to month. Each price is per clinician. The pricing page controls if those figures change.
Do not stop at the headline number. Confirm which tier contains the workflow you intend to test. Ask the same implementation, support, renewal, and exit questions you ask any other vendor.
The clinical output from AI Medical Scribe by Patient Square is a structured SOAP note, ICD-10 suggestions, and a prescription draft for clinician review. The prescription is not sent to a pharmacy. The clinician remains responsible for reviewing and approving the note, codes, and prescription draft.
Be precise about the EHR boundary
Patient Square offers two routes. A practice can use Patient Square EHR from the Copilot tier, or it can keep its existing EHR alongside Patient Square.
The public portability claim is EHR-ready export (PDF · HL7 · FHIR). That phrase describes available export formats. It does not claim automatic filing, bidirectional sync, a named-EHR connector, or guaranteed import into a receiving product. If your workflow depends on a particular destination, test the exact format and fields with that vendor before signing.
Ask Abridge the corresponding question for your proposed deployment: which work happens inside your current system, what has to be configured, who maintains it, and what happens if the EHR or interface changes. Capture the answer in the order form or statement of work.
Run one fair clinical comparison
Pick representative visits, not polished demo cases. Include a routine follow-up, a medication-heavy encounter, a patient who changes topics, and a visit with the note structure your practice finds hardest.
Use a simple scorecard:
- Was the history complete and correctly attributed?
- Did the assessment reflect what the clinician actually concluded?
- How many material edits were needed?
- Were suggested diagnoses and prescription details safe after review?
- How long did final review take?
- What exact step moved the approved note into the system of record?
- Could the practice export and delete the test record as promised?
Record corrections, not impressions. A product can sound convincing in a demo and still miss the details that matter in your visits.
Put privacy answers beside workflow answers
Abridge publishes security material through its Trust Center. Patient Square publishes its security posture and makes a BAA available to US customers. For either vendor, have your privacy or security lead review the actual agreement, not this article.
Ask where audio is processed, whether it is retained, which records persist, who can access them, and how deletion works. Patient Square’s current claim is that visit audio is processed in memory and discarded when the note is drafted. Notes are encrypted in transit and at rest, and the practice can export or delete visits. The security page has the current details.
Decide from written evidence
Choose Abridge if its proposal, deployment plan, and enterprise controls fit the requirements your organization has documented. Choose Patient Square if its published scope and clinical test fit your practice, with either the bundled EHR route or an existing EHR kept alongside it.
Do not choose from a ranking, an uncited price, or a promise that uses “integration” without explaining the workflow. A signed quote, a completed security review, and results from your own visits are the evidence that counts.
If you want to test the Patient Square route, Start your 7-day free trial. Use the scorecard above and keep the final decision with your clinical, privacy, and operational reviewers.