Jefferson City Medical Group, one of the largest multispecialty healthcare provider organizations in mid-Missouri, is using AI to manage meetings, streamline clinical documentation, and optimize provider workflows. One area where the physician-owned and independently operated healthcare group is treading carefully: using AI in its contact center.
“The thing that we think about in healthcare is compassion,” said Aaron Hendrickson, CIO of JCMG, which includes 125 medical healthcare professionals and 600 employees, and serves over 70,000 patients. Indeed, the human touch is central to JCMG’s mission to provide patient-centered care, and its staff has “many differing opinions” about how AI is used.
“When you start going fully digital and you don’t have people [in your contact center], you can run into an issue there where patients say, ‘Oh, I call into JCMG and I never talk to anyone,'” Hendrickson said.
Balancing AI and Human Interaction
While AI isn’t currently deployed in JCMG’s contact center, Hendrickson said he sees future opportunities for using the technology to assist both the help desk and live agents with call handling and other operations. But “there has to be a line in the sand there somewhere,” he added, so that patients can still reach a live person to discuss their healthcare needs.
Hendrickson caught up with InformationWeek at Cisco’s recent WebexOne event in San Diego, where he talked about how JCMG is using AI and Cisco technologies, including Webex and Cisco phones, as part of its digital transformation.
He said he believes the “No. 1 use case” for AI at the organization will ultimately be its integration into the system’s unified communications (UC) platform. But the timing of when JCMG uses AI for every component in its UC suite will be up to the organization’s healthcare professionals, who play a central role in deciding where to invest in AI and other technologies that support the healthcare organization’s staff.
“We have healthcare professionals that say we need to use AI for patient engagement — so, for example, using AI for communicating lab results back to a patient so the provider or clinician doesn’t have to,” he said. “There’s a lot of different use cases out there.”
Strict Protocol for Getting AI Buy-In
JCMG follows a structured process for deploying any new technology to support its physicians. Hendrickson’s IT team works closely with an IT committee that includes five healthcare practitioners from differing specialties. This IT committee reviews demos of new technologies and provides feedback to the IT team. After the assessment and approval of a new technology, JCMG’s healthcare practitioners can still choose whether to opt in or out of using tools.
Some critical enterprise technologies, such as cybersecurity features, are deployed widely across the organization, while some productivity tools, for example, are optional for physicians to use. Hendrickson explained that some optional technologies, like ambient listening, are billed back to the providers.
Ambient listening is a tool that leverages AI to speed up the process of submitting patient charts. Physicians record their conversations with patients, and the ambient listening technology then connects to a third-party AI feature to create a transcript of the conversation.
While some doctors have chosen to opt out of using the technology, the case for ambient listening was relatively clear-cut for many of JCMG’s physicians : “If you’re documenting in real time, then your work/life balance is there because the physician, at the end of the day, isn’t having to sit down and type out a bunch of notes,” Hendrickson said. “They wrap up their day, spend time with their family, and they’re happy.”
The adoption follows broader industry trends. According to a survey by athenahealth, 68% of physicians increased their use of AI for clinical documentation this year, with 48% of physicians citing “improved clinical documentation” as the biggest potential benefit of using AI in healthcare. However, 61% of physicians reported concerns that AI could reduce human interaction with patients. These findings stemmed from athenahealth’s 2025 Physician Sentiment Survey, which surveyed 1,001 physicians nationwide.
AI for Managing Meetings
In addition to clinical documentation, JCMG uses AI to boost meeting productivity. The group currently uses the Cisco AI Assistant features for Webex-based meetings, which provide AI-generated meeting summaries, action items, search options, and more.
Hendrickson explained that the Webex Suite also works well in situations where the JCMG team is having a meeting with external parties using technologies such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meet. (Cisco said Zoom on Cisco devices will be generally available later this year.)
Bob Laliberte, principal analyst specializing in networking and observability at The Cube Research, weighing in on the Cisco event, noted that the company’s focus on interoperability is a big part of its strategy.
“Cisco underscored that openness isn’t a talking point but a product principle. Customers should be able to use third-party applications, run them wherever necessary (cloud, on-premises, or sovereign), and still access new AI features,” Laliberte said.
As to when JCMG will use AI in all areas of its UC, that’s up to the organization’s physicians, Hendrickson said.
“Knowing when we’re ready is more or less when our physicians are ready to make that step,” he said. “We know we need to do it. We know it can add a lot of value to our group.”
*Editor’s note: Cisco provided travel and accommodations for the Cisco WebexOne event in San Diego.
