AI now plays some role in patient visits at 83% of medical groups, according to an Aug. 4, 2026, MGMA Stat poll. The remaining 17% reported no AI use. The poll had 189 applicable responses. 

When we asked the same question a year earlier, 71% of practice leaders reported some AI use in visits. Nearly half of all respondents (47%) used it in no more than a quarter of encounters.¹ 

AI is not only reaching more practices. The bigger change is how broadly practices are using AI:  

• The lowest-use group fell from 47% of respondents to 38%, while every higher-use group grew. 
• The share using AI in more than a quarter of visits rose from 24% in 2025 to 45% in 2026, nearly doubling. 
• The highest-use group — 76% or more of visits — grew from 7% to 17%. 

Among practices using AI at all, about one in five now use it in at least three-quarters of visits, up from about one in 10. That suggests many existing users expanded AI into more visit types over the past year. If first-time adopters were driving most of the growth, the 25%-or-fewer group likely would have grown. Instead, it shrank as the middle and highest-use groups expanded. 

What leaders say happened to the workload 

Leaders whose groups use AI were asked how it has affected staff workload: reduced it, shifted it to other tasks, made no real change, or was still too new to judge. Most wrote their own answer instead of choosing one of the four options. MGMA coded those comments into the four categories and added a fifth category for replies that described both reduction and shifting. 

Across those coded replies: 

• 30% reported no real change. 
• 27% described work shifting to other tasks. 
• 19% said workload had been reduced. 
• 14% said it was too early to tell. 
• 10% described both a reduction and a shift to other tasks. 

Looking across every mention, work shifting to other tasks was more common than workload reduction: 37% mentioned some form of shifting, while 29% mentioned a reduction. 

There's more: MGMA members get exclusive access to the full analysis, including what practice leaders told us about where work is shifting, what recent research says about productivity gains, how governance is catching up and five questions to settle before 2027 budgets close.