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6/11/2026
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Assembly OKs Sen. Lauria, Rep. Tanzi bill to disclose AI use in healthcare visits
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STATE HOUSE — The General Assembly today voted to approve legislation from Sen. Pamela J. Lauria and Rep. Teresa A. Tanzi to require healthcare providers and facilities to notify patients if they use artificial intelligence tools to document visits and to review this documentation for accuracy after the visit.
“Documenting healthcare visits is one of the most important and time-consuming parts of a medical visit for a provider. Accurate visit documentation ensures continuity of care, accurate billing and provides safeguards against legal action,” said Senator Lauria (D-Dist. 32, Barrington, Bristol, East Providence), who works as a primary care nurse practitioner. “However, the documentation burden has become a leading cause of burnout, as reflected in the infamous industry term ‘pajama time,’ which describes the common practice of providers working late into the night to finish their notes. In recent years, AI has become an incredibly valuable tool to help write these notes. The notes are more comprehensive, accurate coding is easier and the time needed to complete notes is drastically reduced. At the same time, patients are very clear that they want as much transparency as possible. This bill ensures that they will always be notified when AI-transcription is used in their visit and have the option to opt-out if they are not comfortable.”
Said Representative Tanzi (D-Dist. 34, South Kingstown, Narragansett), “AI scribes and similar tools have the potential to decrease the documentation burden for medical providers and improve the quality of visits for patients. But as with any rapidly expanding new technology, particularly in a sensitive field like healthcare, it is important to protect patients and transparently disclose when AI scribes are being used. I’d like to thank my colleagues in the House and Senate for helping to ensure this will happen by advancing this bill.”
Ambient AI scribes are tools that record a patient’s visit with their medical provider and generate a clinical note from that visit for the provider to review. This can allow the provider to focus more on the patient rather than on their documentation during the visit. Early studies suggest that these tools can reduce documentation time for providers and reduce burnout and work-related stress.
The bill (2026-H 7538A, 2026-S 2570A) was supported in committee by the Senior Agenda Coalition of Rhode Island and the Rhode Island ACLU.
The bill now goes to the governor for his consideration.
For more information, contact:
Tristan Grau, Publicist
State House Room B20
Providence, RI 02903
401.222.4935
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