Welcome to the forefront of conversational AI as we explore the fascinating world of AI chatbots in our dedicated blog series. Discover the latest advancements, applications, and strategies that propel the evolution of chatbot technology. From enhancing customer interactions to streamlining business processes, these articles delve into the innovative ways artificial intelligence is shaping the landscape of automated conversational agents. Whether you’re a business owner, developer, or simply intrigued by the future of interactive technology, join us on this journey to unravel the transformative power and endless possibilities of AI chatbots.
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PROVINCETOWN — Two years ago, before artificial intelligence ushered in dramatic changes in care at Outer Cape Health Services, family physician Kelly King was used to typing furiously on a computer while seeing a patient. Afterward, she sometimes spent hours on medical databases researching potential diagnoses.
Now Dr. King uses an A.I. program called Abridge, contracted by OCHS, to record, transcribe, and summarize appointments in the form of a clinical note. And she applies an A.I.-powered search tool called OpenEvidence, freely available to health-care providers, to find answers to open-ended questions about alternative medications, new tests, and possible causes of low blood pressure.
The result has been “game-changing” for King, 34, who saw patients at OCHS’s Harwich clinic before it closed on Oct. 31. “The biggest thing it changes is my interaction, my ability to make eye contact with the patient in the room because I don’t have to stare at the computer,” she said.
King now works at the OCHS clinic in Orleans, which opened on Nov. 9.
CEO Damian Archer says that the two “hugely powerful” A.I. tools have transformed care delivery for OCHS’s 20,000 regular patients in Provincetown, Wellfleet, and Orleans. The health center now pays for Abridge, which records conversations with patients and produces notes that can easily be incorporated in an electronic medical record.
The center has also approved use of OpenEvidence, a generative-A.I. chatbot that assists licensed clinicians with diagnoses and treatment plans. It’s available only to Medicare-approved providers. Clinicians use it “sometimes dozens of times a day,” said Scott Weissman, a nurse practitioner and medical director of the OCHS clinic in Provincetown.
“We have the ability to bring the evidence to the bedside in seconds rather than searching through multiple references after a visit,” said Weissman, 41. In his view, the platform is “a one-stop shop” for doctors to synthesize and vet information across medical journals and databases.
Most clinicians at OCHS are now using both tools, Archer said, adding that he thinks they can lead to “better diagnosing, better treatment plan options,” and better-documented notes.
OpenEvidence “is only using validated, evidence-based sources of information, and so the capacity for A.I. to hallucinate with this tool is almost zero,” Archer said.
He declined to say how much OCHS pays for Abridge, saying that disclosing the amount would “negatively impact our negotiating capacity.” But at a reported $208 monthly cost per provider, the cost of A.I. scribing would come to $102,000 annually for the health center if all its 41 listed providers used it.
The two A.I. tools can still sometimes make mistakes, according to both King and Dr. Bill Shay, 72, OCHS’s director of primary care for HIV services. Even if outright “hallucinations” are much less common in OpenEvidence, said Shay, its output can be misleading in other ways. OpenEvidence “may go off and say you have to order 10 different tests when you really don’t need to,” he said.
Doctors at OCHS often use OpenEvidence after an appointment, but scribing takes place as recorded in the exam room if a patient consents. Shay and King said that of the roughly 1,200 and 1,300 patients they see a year, respectively, they each had known only one to decline the A.I. note-taking.
“I was surprised, honestly, that I didn’t get more pushback when we started using Abridge,” said King. Some patients do have concerns about privacy and “not having control of the narrative of what it scribes,” she said.
“The only reason why I think that I can use A.I. safely and OpenEvidence safely is because I’ve practiced medicine now for 20 years,” Archer said. Younger clinicians “need to learn how to fly a plane without A.I. at all” before learning “when to use what in what situation,” he said.
That’s one reason he envisions a staff-wide curriculum to educate employees about using the technology. “We’re living in the Jetsons era,” he said, “and you need to learn how Rosie the robot works.”
A.I. Creeps In
A.I. scribes and diagnostic tools are now common at hospitals and private practices nationwide. A March 2026 survey by the American Medical Association found that 81 percent of physicians reported using A.I. in their professional practices, with the most popular uses summarizing medical research and creating progress notes or care plans for patients.
Adopting the tools here dates to the spring of 2025, Archer said, when a task force of administrators and doctors at Outer Cape began meeting monthly to discuss A.I. use by clinicians and patients alike.
Archer said that “the moment that A.I. started to creep into the capacity for a clinician or a patient to show up and use ChatGPT to look up something,” the nonprofit’s compliance officer, Deb Gavron, “sensed right away” that a formal policy was needed.
One of the task force’s first decisions was endorsing Gavron’s proposal that any use of A.I. at OCHS must be vetted for compliance with federal rules that protect patients’ private health information and approved on a “case-by-case basis” by I.T. and compliance staff, Archer said. That proposal was endorsed by OCHS’s board of directors.
Since then, the task force has become a “governance committee” that meets four times a year with between 12 and 20 members to discuss A.I. use, Archer said. Members include the center’s program directors, information technology staff, and several board members who Archer said offered “the perspectives of the users of A.I. as patients.”
The committee approved Abridge and OpenEvidence for clinicians’ use, Archer said, and also approved use of the Microsoft chatbot Copilot for “general admin stuff.” (He declined to say how much OCHS pays for Copilot.)
Shay first encountered OpenEvidence as a tool at a Harvard Medical School course last year. “I told everybody: don’t walk but run” toward the technology, said Shay.
Founded in 2021 by Canadian entrepreneur Daniel Nadler, OpenEvidence is now valued at $15 billion. The company has agreements with many major medical journals to use and cite their literature in its signature product: a chatbot that will answer questions from health-care professionals for free.
“It’s practice changing — and for the better,” said Shay. He offered the example of a patient with “blood pressure that’s not well controlled, and so you try one medicine and another,” but neither seems to work. The technology can help identify factors like sleep apnea or prescribed testosterone that “aren’t something you think of all the time” but are specific to the patient described.
As for A.I.-based scribing, “I have a hard time typing and talking to the patient at the same time,” said Shay. The transcription can include details otherwise missed. “At the end of the day, you may forget you talked about vitamin D, or that you talked about their family history of amyloidosis,” he said.
As for Weissman, he still prefers to take his own notes by hand. “In my experience, the ambient documentation is great for a longer visit,” said Weissman, who often takes walk-ins at the Provincetown clinic. “I found that it takes almost the same amount of time for me to proofread the A.I. version of the note as it does to just type up the note.”
A Human Touch
The widespread use of A.I. chatbots by the public has amplified a trend already familiar to many doctors: patients arriving with internet research on their ailment already done. “Instead of Dr. Google, which was the past euphemism, they’ll say Dr. GPT or Dr. Claude,” Weissman said.
While OpenEvidence relies only on peer-reviewed medical research, the chatbots scraping the broader internet can make a relatively benign finding like a “torn calf muscle” seem more dangerous, said Weissman.
“That’s the difference between a medical professional and a layperson,” said Shay. “You can tell when that’s just craziness.”
“Patients are looking stuff up all the time, whether they tell us or not,” said King. “Unless it’s the first time I’m meeting you, I kind of know your context” as a patient, she added. “That’s something that so far A.I. can’t do.”
King said she worries especially about kids and teenagers relying on A.I. instead of talking to a doctor about mental health. “I’ve had seven-year-olds come in and say, ‘Oh yeah, I was feeling depressed, so I talked to A.I., and it made me feel better,’” she said.
Because A.I. chatbots tend toward sycophancy, King worries they can cause children to minimize their symptoms because “the robot’s like: ‘Your stress is totally reasonable.’
“It really needs to be A.I. with a human attached,” King said.
She agrees that tools like scribing and OpenEvidence can help a small health center retain providers. “Clinician burnout is real,” she said. “But we need to have really good guardrails in place for that technology,” she said, such as more oversight by the health center.
The adoption of A.I. coincides with another technological transition at OCHS — the increased use of telehealth. King estimates that she’s seeing roughly 40 percent of her patients remotely since the transition to the Orleans clinic, which has fewer than half the exam rooms of the Harwich clinic. She saw only 10 percent of patients remotely at the Harwich clinic.
Patients seeking telehealth appointments can often be seen within 48 hours, while in-person visits can take “a week or weeks,” said King. But she’s hopeful that the transition will open up more appointments for those who prefer the latter.
That’s another reason she believes “A.I. won’t ever fully eclipse medicine,” she said, “because some patients really just want to be seen in person by a human being.”
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Filed Under: Featured, Health & Healthcare, News, Provincetown, Towns
Now a staff reporter, Tyler Jager was a 2025 winter reporting fellow supported by the Independent’s nonprofit partner the Local Journalism Project. Tyler has a master’s degree in political thought and intellectual history from University of Cambridge.
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