Stroke Patient Forced to Switch GP Surgery After AI Receptionist Could Not Understand Her Speech

AI receptionist could not understand me, says Doncaster stroke patient

A woman recovering from a stroke has said she was "upset and frustrated" that an AI reception service at her GP surgery could not understand her, prompting her to register elsewhere. The ASA surgery at Armthorpe near Doncaster was one of many facilities using a nationwide AI system called EMMA to prevent long wait times on the phone. Judith Butterfield, 71, said after her stroke she attempted to book a GP appointment five times but could not get past the AI service. Practice manager Claire Oxley said the EMMA service had been "decommissioned" at Armthorpe and was no longer used at the surgery. Butterfield originally spent two months at Doncaster Royal Infirmary following a stroke in January. It primarily affected the strength and mobility down the right side of her body and left her speech fragmented. The grandmother said that the issues with EMMA were compounded because the AI service asked patients not to use speakerphone. Butterfield said: "I need to hold the phone in my left hand but I can't use the keypad now with my right hand so what am I supposed to do? "It's not appropriate as a service to have a robot taking details. "It should be a more personal thing where you're talking to a person and asking questions. "There was a point in the conversation where I had to repeat my name and she just couldn't understand me. "If it's a person they can say, 'could you spell that?' But the call just dropped off. It was very difficult and upsetting." After growing frustrated with the AI service at Armthorpe, the former HR worker has now registered with the Burns Practice in Doncaster. "They have very good, friendly, helpful receptionists," she said. "There's still the wait when you phone up and you're in a queue but you can use a call-back service. "I was amazed when I spoke to a person." According to the watchdog Healthwatch, Butterfield's experience is not unique with other Yorkshire patients struggling to be understood by AI reception services. Oxley said: "I am sorry to hear this patient encountered difficulties and felt the need to move to another surgery. "I can confirm the AI EMMA service has been decommissioned and the practice are no longer using this system. "We would welcome the patient back to the surgery and I can assure this lady and others that we have successfully recruited more reception staff to help improve our service to patients." A spokesperson for QuantumLoopAI, the company behind the system, said: "We are sorry to hear about this patient's experience. "Nobody should feel they have to change practice to be heard, and with her consent we would welcome the chance to look into what happened and help put it right." The company said every practice using EMMA could set up "priority routing", allowing patients to go "straight through to the reception team on every call". Listen to highlights from South Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North

AI receptionists seem like a dangerous idea after a patient revealed her doctor's system could not understand her speech

Healthwatch found the system struggled with regional accents and speech impediments, in a health service whose own accessibility rules already require practices to meet patients' communication needs A GP surgery in South Yorkshire has withdrawn an AI receptionist after a woman recovering from a stroke could not make it understand her and moved to another practice. The NHS Accessible Information Standard has required practices to identify and meet patients' communication needs since 2016. A woman recovering from a stroke could not get her doctor's AI receptionist to understand her. After several attempts to book an appointment she registered with a different practice, and the surgery has since withdrawn the system. The details are the point. Her stroke had left her speech fragmented and affected her right side, and the automated service asked her not to use speakerphone, which she needed because she could hold the handset with only one hand. This was not one bad call. Healthwatch Rotherham found that the system, an AI receptionist called Emma, "does not respond well to variations in speech such as regional accents or those with speech impediments." Other patients described giving up. "I could never get it to understand me, I ended up just hanging up and not bothering to try and book an appointment," one told the watchdog, while others travelled to the surgery in person instead. Its developer sees it differently. QuantumLoopAI says Emma is trained on a wide range of accents and dialects, supports 17 languages, lets callers ask for a member of staff at any time, and that more than 90% of patients report an improvement. The national direction of travel is not away from this. The NHS App will use AI to triage patients as part of a £10B technology overhaul. The governance answer so far is local. South Yorkshire's integrated care board says it is working with Healthwatch on guidance and describes adopting these systems as an individual GP practice decision. What is coming is more capable, not less. A British supplier is building a triage model for the NHS with Nvidia, designed to work out what a patient needs before a clinician sees them. A standard for this already exists. The Accessible Information Standard obliges GP practices to identify, record, flag and meet patients' communication needs, and has done since 2016. Europe classifies the technology itself. The EU AI Act puts emergency healthcare patient triage in its high-risk tier, which attaches testing, logging and human oversight duties that a booking line does not carry. Britain has the standard without the classification. What it has today is one practice that unplugged the machine, after a woman recovering from a stroke gave up and went somewhere else.