An ambient AI scribe listens during your GI clinic visit and drafts the office note from what you say, then hands it back about two minutes after the patient leaves. It documents the talking part of your day: IBS, GERD, IBD follow-ups, hepatology, celiac. It does not write your colonoscopy or endoscopy report, and it doesn’t read pathology or images. You review the draft, confirm the codes as suggestions, and sign.
Key takeaways
- The scribe drafts your clinic note about two minutes after the visit; the procedure report is a separate document it never touches.
- It captures what you say, so a Bristol type 6, an ALT of 90, or “moderate Crohn’s on infliximab” all go in the note as you stated them.
- It doesn’t read biopsies, labs, or scans. If you say the path showed active colitis, that’s your reading, recorded.
- ICD-10 suggestions are starting points, because GI coding is fussy about site and complication.
- Audio is discarded the moment the note drafts. Nothing gets recorded and kept.
Key facts
- From end of visit to drafted note
- 2min
- Assist tier, per clinician, annual billing
- $79/mo
- Procedure reports the scribe writes
- 0
Source: Patient Square product specifications, 2026.
Where the documentation actually piles up in GI
A GI practice runs on two very different note types. There’s the procedure report, structured and generated in your endoscopy software after each case. And there’s the clinic note, written by you, in prose, about the conversation you just had. The scribe is for the second one.
Think about a Thursday afternoon clinic. A GERD patient who wants off their PPI. An IBS follow-up who tried the low-FODMAP diet. Two IBD patients, one flaring, one stable on a biologic. A hepatology visit with a fresh set of labs. By 4pm you’ve had eight conversations and written maybe two of the notes. The rest wait.
That backlog is well documented. The AMA reports primary-care visits average about 36 minutes of EHR time per encounter, and its 2023 Organizational Biopsy found roughly 21% of physicians spend more than eight hours a week on the record outside normal hours. GI clinics carry the same weight because the histories are long and the plans are detailed. The scribe drafts that clinic note from your narration so it isn’t waiting for you at 6pm.
The procedure boundary, said plainly
This is the line to be clear about. The scribe does not write your endoscopy or colonoscopy report. It has no view into your scope images, it doesn’t know the withdrawal time, and it can’t populate findings by colonic segment. That report lives in your procedure system, with its photo documentation and its structured fields, and it stays there.
The scribe handles the office visit around the procedure. The pre-procedure consult where you explain a screening colonoscopy and go over prep. The post-procedure follow-up where you discuss what the path came back showing. In that follow-up, if you say the biopsies from the sigmoid showed active colitis and you’re stepping up therapy, the note reflects your words. The scribe records that you said it. It never opened the report or read the slides.
Same for imaging and labs. You state that the MRE showed a stricture, or that the ALT is 90 and the platelets are down. Those are your findings, spoken by you, recorded as stated. The scribe is a stenographer for your assessment, not a radiologist and not a pathologist. Honestly, that’s the whole design point: keep the reading with the physician and let the tool write down what the physician says.
What a GI clinic note has to capture
The vocabulary is specific and the plans are conditional, so getting your spoken terms down accurately is most of the job.
| Note element | What you say out loud | What the scribe drafts |
|---|---|---|
| IBD activity | ”Crohn’s in clinical remission, HBI 3, no bleeding” | Disease activity as you stated it |
| Stool pattern | ”Bristol type 6, three loose stools a day” | Stool scale and frequency, as dictated |
| Hepatology labs | ”ALT 90, bilirubin normal, platelets 130” | Lab values, as you read them out |
| Screening plan | ”Average risk, repeat colonoscopy in ten years” | Interval you specified |
| GERD management | ”Trial off the PPI, back on H2 blocker as needed” | Plan with the step you chose |
| Biologic status | ”Cycle continues on infliximab, next infusion in eight weeks” | Treatment and timing |
| Biopsy narration | ”Path from the last scope showed active colitis” | Your account of the result |
Notice the pattern. Every row is something you say, not something the scribe figures out. A screening interval is a decision you make from risk and prior findings; the scribe writes the interval you state, it doesn’t compute one. The American College of Gastroenterology recommends average-risk colorectal cancer screening start at age 45, but which patient is average risk and when they come back is your call, dictated and recorded.
IBD follow-ups are where it earns its keep
IBD clinic notes are dense. Disease and phenotype, current therapy and how long they’ve been on it, symptom activity, extraintestinal stuff, the last scope, the last labs, and the plan that hangs off all of it. Rebuilding that from memory after clinic is exactly the kind of note that slides into the evening.
Narrate it as you already do in the room. “Ulcerative colitis, left-sided, in clinical remission on mesalamine, no bleeding, Mayo endoscopic subscore 1 from the last scope, continue current dose, recheck in a year.” The scribe drafts that while it’s fresh. You confirm the activity index and the plan, fix anything it misheard, and sign. The disease-activity judgment was yours the whole time. The tool just kept you from typing it out twice.
ICD-10 for GI: suggestions, not final codes
GI coding gets specific fast. Crohn’s versus ulcerative colitis, with or without complications, the site, the bleeding status. The scribe offers ICD-10 suggestions from what you said, and here they’re a starting point more than usual.
Say “Crohn’s with a fistula” and it might surface a K50 family suggestion; a GERD visit, a K21 suggestion; a screening colonoscopy, a Z12.11 suggestion. Each one needs you to confirm the exact variant, including complications and whether the code matches the encounter reason. The scribe can’t resolve “with abscess” versus “without” from one spoken sentence, so it hands you a candidate and you finalize it. Our post on how ICD-10 suggestions are generated covers why the review step isn’t optional.
Prescriptions and the draft you still check
GI visits generate orders: PPIs, mesalamine, budesonide, antiemetics, sometimes a biologic plan. When your plan includes a medication, the scribe drafts it from what you said, spelling out the drug and dose so you’re not retyping the order.
It doesn’t screen the draft for interactions or dosing, and it doesn’t send anything anywhere. There’s no e-prescribing link. For a patient on a biologic with a stack of other meds, the interaction check is the read you already run, and it stays yours. You review the draft against the regimen, adjust what needs adjusting, and act on it in your own prescribing workflow. Our note on prescription draft safety explains how the draft works and why you’re the safety check.
Security in a specialty with sensitive records
GI records hold sensitive material, from IBD histories to hepatitis and liver-disease status. Audio is processed in memory and discarded the moment the note drafts, so no recording of the visit sticks around. Notes are encrypted in transit with TLS 1.2 or higher and at rest with AES-256, they belong to your practice, and you can export or delete them whenever you want.
We maintain HIPAA compliant safeguards, offer a signed BAA to every customer, and have a SOC 2 Type II audit underway. If compliance drives your decision, start with the security page and our detail on BAAs and consent.
When it’s the right buy, and when it isn’t yet
Here’s the honest verdict. AI Scribe by Patient Square is an ambient AI medical scribe that runs alongside any EHR: you copy or export the finished note, so there’s no integration project and no write-back into your system. That’s a Practice Copilot with the scribe as one module. If your clinic notes are eating your evenings, if the IBS and IBD and hepatology histories are long and you’d rather talk than type, the trade is easy to weigh. Narrate as you already do, and the note drafts for your review.
But a scribe isn’t the right buy for you yet if your bottleneck is the procedure side. If your evenings go to endoscopy reports, prep instructions, and pathology reconciliation rather than clinic prose, the ambient note won’t touch that work, and you’d be paying for a tool aimed at the lighter half of your documentation. In that case, wait. When your clinic volume and note burden justify it, come back.
The published evidence points the useful direction for clinic-heavy practices. A 2025 JAMA Network Open study of 263 ambulatory clinicians across six health systems found burnout dropped from 51.9% to 38.8% after 30 days on an ambient scribe, with measured improvement in after-hours documentation time. That’s a burnout signal from an office-visit setting, not a promise about your exact numbers.
Pricing starts from $79 per clinician per month on the annual Assist plan, then steps up to the Copilot and Autopilot tiers, which add a bundled AI EHR, messaging, and follow-up automation. If you want to compare vendors first, see our roundup of AI medical scribes and how to evaluate an AI scribe before you commit to anyone.
Want to see it run on a real GI clinic afternoon? compare the options. Pricing is on the pricing page.