The visit note, written while you listen

A sixty-minute functional medicine visit produces a lot of information: history, supplements, sleep, the three things the patient mentions at the door on the way out. For years the choice was to type while listening, or to listen and reconstruct the visit at 8 PM. An AI scribe is the third option, and it only works if three things are true.

1. Consent is not a checkbox in a corner

The patient hears, in plain language, that the visit will be recorded to draft the note, that a person reviews it, and that they can say no at any point without it affecting their care. They sign once, the consent is stored with the record, and the practitioner sees a clear indicator before recording starts. If the patient declines, nothing records, and the note is written the old way. Consent that is buried in a twelve-page intake is not consent a patient can act on.

2. The draft is organised your way

A wellness note is not a fifteen-minute urgent-care note. Ours capture the patient’s own words about symptoms, what changed since last time, medications and supplements with doses, results discussed, the assessment and the plan, and the follow-up the patient agreed to. The scribe drafts into that structure. It also pulls out the things that need action after the visit: the lab to order, the recall to set, the message the patient asked to receive in writing.

The best thing about a good draft is not that it saves typing. It is that it catches the plan you would have forgotten to write down.

3. The signature is the note

A draft is a draft. Until the practitioner reads it, edits it and signs it, it is not part of the record, it is not visible to the patient, and it does not drive any follow-up. That review step is where clinical judgement lives, and it is faster than writing from scratch precisely because the raw material is already in front of you. Most of our practitioners sign within the hour, at the desk, not at the kitchen table.

What patients notice

Eye contact. It sounds small, and patients mention it more than anything else: the practitioner is looking at them, not at a screen. The second thing they notice is that the after-visit summary arrives the same day, in plain language, because it was drafted from the same conversation.

What to ask any scribe vendor

Where is the audio stored, and for how long? Can the patient withdraw consent, and what happens to the recording when they do? Does the note follow your structure or theirs? Who can see a draft before it is signed? If the answers are vague, the product is not ready for a clinical setting, however good the demo looks.