Automation has already become a must-have conversation in healthcare practices, but adopting new technologies in day-to-day clinical operations is still far from simple.
A new survey gathered input from 285 practice owners, office managers, and front desk professionals across dental, specialty medical, optometry, and veterinary offices. The picture that emerges is pretty straightforward: teams are overwhelmed by repetitive manual tasks, while artificial intelligence sits on the bench because of an obstacle everyone recognizes but few know how to solve.
The study is the 2026 State of Healthcare Pulse Survey, conducted and published by Weave, a patient engagement software company, on August 20, 2026, via Business Wire. While the data comes from that company, the findings describe patterns that apply to the administrative landscape of healthcare and veterinary medicine more broadly, not just to one vendor’s tools.
Worth being upfront about this right now: the data comes from a company that sells exactly the type of solution the study advocates for, which doesn’t invalidate the numbers but does call for a more careful look at the framing.
What stands out in the results isn’t just the volume of manual work that still dominates administrative routines. It’s the combination of high demand for automation and a remarkably rational caution around data privacy.
That’s the core tension this survey exposes with real clarity, and it’s exactly what’s worth digging into. 👇
The weight of manual work in clinics
Anyone who works in a clinic knows the deal: a big chunk of the day gets eaten up by tasks that have nothing to do with seeing patients. Scheduling appointments, confirming times over the phone, sending reminders, filling out forms, updating records, following up on outstanding payments. All of it takes time, demands attention, and in most cases is still done by hand. The Weave survey shows this reality isn’t the exception — it’s the norm across practices of different specialties.
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And the numbers leave no room for doubt. Eighty percent of respondents said duplicate data entry affects their workflow, and for 47% of that group the impact is moderate or significant. On top of that, 63% reported spending an hour or more per day on manual data entry, and roughly a third — 32% — spend two hours or more on that kind of task. The survey organizers described that time as the equivalent of weeks of work per year that never directly reach the patient.
The most revealing detail is that this bottleneck isn’t a training problem or a staffing problem. It’s structural. Seventy percent of practices said they don’t work with an integrated software stack, which means the same patient information has to be typed multiple times into different systems that simply don’t talk to each other. It’s the classic invisible rework that nobody notices until you add up the total at the end of the month.
The issue is that this manual model creates a silent bottleneck. When the administrative team spends most of their time on repetitive, low-value tasks, there’s less room for what actually matters: the patient experience, quality of care, and efficient practice management. Automation steps in right at that point — not to replace professionals, but to take off their hands the tasks a machine can handle with more speed, fewer errors, and a much lower cost.
Where practices want to automate most
When asked which tasks they’d most like to automate, the professionals gave remarkably consistent answers, all centered on front desk and administrative work. Here’s how the priority list shook out:
- Appointment scheduling and confirmations — 49% of respondents
- Insurance verification and coverage checks — 46%
- Patient intake and forms — 42%
- Billing and payment reminders — 41%
Notice these are overwhelmingly administrative functions, not clinical ones. That’s probably exactly why the interest in automating them is so widespread, even among practices that still take a cautious stance toward artificial intelligence in general. Nobody is talking about letting AI make clinical decisions — they’re talking about delegating the mechanical work that jams up the front desk every single day.
And here’s the paradox the survey nails with precision: there’s real demand for automation in clinical workflows, but adoption still runs into concrete barriers. It’s not a lack of interest. The professionals know the technology can help. What’s missing is trust in the process, especially when the conversation involves sensitive patient data. 🤔
The staffing crunch adds to the equation
There’s another factor pushing practices toward automation, and it’s a painful one: the people shortage. The survey shows that 64% of practices experienced staffing shortages at some point in the last twelve months, and 48% are dealing with that shortage right now. For 24% of respondents, the situation got bad enough that it forced a reduction in patient volume or appointments served.
In that scenario, automation starts to look less like a substitute for hiring and more like a way to stretch the capacity of the team that already exists. Among practices that adopted automated workflows in 2025, 41% reported improved productivity and team efficiency, and 29% pointed to a reduction in workload and employee burnout. In other words, when applied well, the technology helps overloaded staff breathe a little easier. 😮💨
Data privacy as a real brake on AI
Data privacy isn’t an irrational fear. When a practice handles medical records, clinical histories, financial information, and personal patient data, every technology decision carries weight that goes well beyond operational efficiency. There’s a legal and ethical responsibility involved, and healthcare professionals know that better than anyone.
The numbers confirm that caution. Around 41% of practices said they’ve already adopted some AI workflow or that the technology is actively transforming their operations. Another 33% said they’ve considered using AI tools but haven’t committed to adoption yet. And what’s holding that second group back? The answer is clear: HIPAA and data privacy concerns topped the list of risk factors, cited by 60% of respondents, ahead of fear that AI would produce low-quality work (51%) and regulatory uncertainty (35%).
An important detail here. Veterinary practices aren’t directly subject to HIPAA the same way human medical and dental offices are, since that legislation governs human patient health information. So the survey doesn’t make clear whether veterinary respondents’ concerns revolve specifically around client and payment data rather than HIPAA compliance itself.
As Marcus Bertilson, COO and Head of Product at Weave, put it when commenting on the results: the professionals know exactly what’s slowing them down every day, and it’s no mystery — it’s manual work bouncing between systems that don’t communicate. He added that caution around AI shouldn’t be confused with resistance. It should be seen as a rational response to a market that hasn’t yet earned these practices’ trust when it comes to handling patient data.
For a practice manager who has to answer for this under LGPD in Brazil or HIPAA in the United States, the silence from many vendors on security just isn’t acceptable. 🔐
What practices reported after adopting automation
Among respondents who got some form of automation up and running in 2025, the reported results were pretty positive:
- 61% pointed to improved communication and patient responsiveness
- 41% reported gains in team productivity and efficiency
- 39% saw fewer no-shows and last-minute cancellations
It’s important to read these numbers with both feet on the ground. As with any self-reported survey, these figures reflect the perception of people who chose to adopt automation, not a controlled comparison with practices that didn’t. Still, the pattern is encouraging and shows that when implementation is done right, the benefits show up in daily operations.
AI in healthcare practices: between enthusiasm and reality
Artificial intelligence has entered the vocabulary of clinics, but it hasn’t consistently made it into clinical routines. There’s genuine enthusiasm about the technology’s potential, especially when the topic is reducing operational load and improving the patient experience. But that enthusiasm coexists with a healthy dose of skepticism, fueled by frustrating experiences with tools that promised a lot and delivered little, plus the legitimate privacy concerns already covered here.
The Weave survey captures that tension well. On one side, professionals who want to simplify their workflow and free up time for patient care. On the other, a technology landscape that still doesn’t offer all the guarantees needed for adoption to happen with security and confidence. That gap isn’t insurmountable, but it takes effort from both sides: from technology companies, which need to be more transparent about how they protect data, and from practices, which need to invest in training so their teams can properly evaluate and use the tools available.
It’s also worth noting that the survey doesn’t break down how many of the 285 respondents were specifically from veterinary practices within the larger group of dental, medical, and optometry offices. So there’s no way to know with precision how much of each finding reflects the veterinary reality in particular. Anyone wanting to dive into the full methodology can consult the survey as published directly.
What the survey ultimately points to is that healthcare practices are at an inflection point. Automation has moved past being a distant trend and become a concrete operational demand. AI is available, accessible, and increasingly capable of handling the sector’s particularities. What’s still missing is the element that has always been the hardest to build in any relationship between technology and a regulated industry: trust. And that trust isn’t created through marketing — it’s built through transparency, consistency, and verifiable results over time. 💡
Until that landscape stabilizes, the natural movement is exactly what the survey describes: plenty of willingness to move forward, but foot on the brake when patient data is on the line. And honestly, there’s nothing wrong with that.
