In early 2025, Al Noor Crescent Hospital in Dubai had a problem that wasn’t clinical. Outcomes were stable. Standards were high. But behind the scenes, doctors were burning out, sick leaves were rising, and patients were starting to feel the difference. The cause wasn’t mysterious. It was documentation.
Executive summary
Al Noor Crescent piloted Plato MedScribe across Internal Medicine OPD, ED fast track, and chronic care clinics to reduce documentation load without disrupting clinical flow. Within the pilot period, leadership saw measurable operational gains and a noticeably better experience inside the consultation room.
- Documentation time per outpatient visit: 11 minutes to 3 minutes
- After-hours charting: about 2 hours per day to about 1 hour per day
- Physician sick leave requests: down 21 percent within three months
- Patient experience: "doctor listened carefully" up from 78 percent to 88 percent
- Patient experience: "doctor explained clearly" up from 74 percent to 85 percent
It started with a pattern nobody wanted to say out loud
If you walked through the outpatient wing after clinic hours, you’d still see lights on. Not because the hospital was short staffed. Because charts were waiting.
Documentation was taking over the day in small pieces: five minutes between appointments, ten minutes after lunch, a long stretch after the last patient. Over time, those pieces became a second shift.
Research is often cited showing physicians spend around 15 hours a week on paperwork and administration, including about nine hours on EHR documentation. At Al Noor Crescent, that burden showed up as fatigue, short tempers, and clinicians quietly reaching their limit.
The person who felt it first: Dr Aisha Al Qasimi
Dr Aisha Al Qasimi led Internal Medicine OPD, one of the hospital’s busiest outpatient services. High complexity patients. Back-to-back appointments. Constant follow-ups. And a documentation queue that never stopped growing.
She wasn’t the loudest voice in the building. She was the most consistent. In leadership meetings, she kept bringing the conversation back to one truth: the hospital was asking doctors to do two full jobs every day.
“We are not struggling because we can’t treat patients,” she told the team. “We are struggling because we can’t finish the day.”
When burnout becomes an operational risk
By the first quarter of 2025, internal signals turned into numbers that leadership could not ignore.
- 62 percent of physicians reported high or severe documentation-related burnout
- After-hours charting averaged about 2 hours per day in outpatient-heavy specialties
- Physician and resident sick leave requests were up 18 percent year over year
Patient experience scores began to reflect what clinicians were living through. The top-box score for “doctor listened carefully” fell from 86 percent to 78 percent in two quarters.
No one had become worse at medicine. But the experience had changed. When a clinician’s attention is split, patients feel it instantly.
Why patient satisfaction fell even when clinical quality stayed strong
This is the part hospital dashboards don’t always capture. Patients don’t only judge care by outcomes. They judge it by how it felt.
More screen time. Shorter explanations. Less eye contact. And when patients leave uncertain, confusion turns into repeat calls, follow-up visits, and frustration that spreads through the system.
The pivot: Plato MedScribe in the highest-pressure departments
Instead of forcing a hospital-wide rollout, leadership made a practical decision. Start where documentation pressure and patient volume collide.
- Internal Medicine OPD
- Emergency Department fast track
- Endocrinology and chronic care clinics
Dr Aisha volunteered her department for the pilot and set one rule that kept everyone honest: if it disrupts clinical flow, it doesn't stay.
Why Plato fit the reality of a Dubai hospital
Plato MedScribe was adopted because it worked with the visit, not against it. Clinicians could start the consult, stop at the end, review a structured note, and place it into the chart with minimal steps.
Audio capture also mattered. Busy rooms, fast conversations, and multilingual environments demand consistency. The hospital deployed Plato Echo in consultation rooms and used wearable mic options for workflows that required more movement. The goal was simple: capture the encounter clearly so the note quality stays reliable.
A rollout plan designed to protect clinical flow
The hospital kept implementation lightweight and clinical-first:
- Short onboarding per department
- Physician and nurse champions in each unit
- Two-week review period so clinicians approved every note before finalization
- Weekly check-ins with clinical governance and IT focused on safety and adoption
By the end of the first week, something shifted. Doctors stopped talking about “learning the tool” and started talking about what time they got home.
What changed in eight weeks
Documentation time dropped fast
Average documentation effort per outpatient visit fell from 11 minutes to 3 minutes. That’s 8 minutes back per visit.
In high-volume outpatient departments, that recovered time doesn’t float into the air. It shows up as fewer bottlenecks, less rushing, and far less work pushed into the evening.
After-hours charting was cut in half
After-hours charting fell from about 2 hours per day to about 1 hour per day. For many clinicians, that single hour is the difference between ending the day tired and ending it depleted.
Sick leaves declined and schedules stabilized
Within three months, physician sick leave requests dropped by 21 percent. Resident unplanned absences dropped by 14 percent. Department heads reported fewer last-minute gaps and fewer clinic cancellations driven by exhaustion.
Patients felt the difference in the room
The hospital tracked two patient experience questions closely:
- “Doctor listened carefully” rose from 78 percent to 88 percent
- “Doctor explained clearly” rose from 74 percent to 85 percent
The pattern was simple. When documentation stops pulling attention away, patients feel seen.
Return visits increased and referrals followed
Pilot departments saw a 12 percent increase in returning patient visits and a 9 percent increase in new appointments driven by referrals and online reviews. Volume increased, but burnout pressure eased because documentation no longer scaled linearly with patient load.
The unexpected win: fewer confused follow-ups
One of the biggest silent drains on operations is post-visit confusion. When patients forget instructions, they call. They return. They delay treatment.
The hospital introduced patient-friendly summaries for medication changes and chronic care plans. Patients received a clear plain-language summary via a secure QR code, so they didn’t have to rely on memory alone.
Result: clarification calls dropped by 17 percent in pilot departments, and resolution was faster when calls did happen.
EHR compatibility in the UAE: keep what works, remove what doesn’t
Hospitals in Dubai rarely have the luxury of switching systems. The goal was never to replace the EHR. The goal was to make documentation faster and cleaner inside the existing workflow.
Plato MedScribe is designed to work alongside common enterprise EHR environments through web or API workflows, enabling clinicians to review and place notes into the patient record with minimal friction. Structured output also supports documentation clarity for downstream needs such as coding and billing workflows.
Security and compliance that leadership could stand behind
For a regulated environment, trust is part of clinical safety. Plato MedScribe is built with healthcare-grade security practices, including encrypted data handling and access controls suitable for regulated settings, aligned with HIPAA and GDPR expectations and local UAE data requirements.
Clinicians remain in control: notes are reviewed before finalization, and the workflow is designed to minimize unnecessary retention of sensitive audio.
What this means for Dubai hospitals going forward
This story isn’t about adding technology for the sake of innovation. It’s about deleting the work that was quietly draining the clinicians who power the system.
When documentation stops stealing time, hospitals get more stable staffing, better patient experience, and growth without burning out the team.
A final word from Dr Aisha Al Qasimi
“Plato didn’t change how we practice medicine. It changed how our days end. We finish documentation while the day is still happening, and patients can feel our attention again.”
