NRC Health Brings Ambient Listening With Agentic AI to the Front Lines of Leader Rounding

Early pilots show a 60x increase in documentation depth and a shift to consistent context-rich insights, without added burden

LINCOLN, Neb.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--NRC Health, the leader in healthcare experience management, today announced a major advancement introducing new AI capabilities designed to help healthcare leaders easily turn everyday human interactions into meaningful insight, action, and deeper connection, without sacrificing the human connection that care depends on.

NRC Health’s latest innovation combines ambient listening with agentic AI to capture the sentiment, nuance, and intent of real-world conversations with a simple tap. AI then prepares ready-to-review documentation automatically, removing paperwork while preserving accuracy, context, and trust.

Leaders stay fully present in the moment, while insight is captured and made actionable behind the scenes. Early deployments show that this approach is already capturing significantly richer, more complete documentation without increasing time spent in the interaction.

“Healthcare leaders are under immense pressure to improve experience, quality, and outcomes, but they’re stretched thin,” said Trent Green, CEO of NRC Health. “AI should take work off their plates, not add to it. Because we’ve focused exclusively on healthcare for more than 45 years, we’ve designed these capabilities to enable leaders, keeping them present with patients and staff while documentation and reporting happen in the background.”

The new AI capabilities are built on Huey™, NRC Health’s AI engine designed specifically for Human Understanding® in healthcare. Purpose-built for the sensitivity and regulatory realities of healthcare, Huey interprets human sentiment and context responsibly.

Leader rounding is the first application of this AI enablement, bringing intelligence directly into one of the most human moments in care. By organizing live conversations into clear themes, leaders can identify coaching opportunities, share recognition with staff, and surface concerns earlier, improving the quality of follow-through, documentation, and reporting without adding steps to already full workflows.

Ambient listening surfaces insight directly from the interaction itself—capturing patient sentiment and evaluating the quality of the conversation, not just whether rounding occurred.

UofL Health, a fully integrated academic health system delivering patient-centered care across a network of hospitals and clinical sites, has been exploring new ways to better understand the patient experience during leader rounding.

“Our comparison reports are helpful, but this is ten times more revealing,” said Mary Tallant, MSW, CPXP, System Director of Patient Experience at UofL Health. “It’s not just showing whether rounding happened—it’s showing the caliber of the interaction and what’s really going on in those conversations.”

“This represents a shift from measuring experience after the fact to understanding it as it’s happening,” said Helen Hrdy, COO at NRC Health. “Instead of asking healthcare teams to do more administrative work, we’re using technology to quietly support them, capturing insight automatically so leaders can focus on care, coaching, and connection.”

Early pilot deployments are already demonstrating meaningful impact. In initial health-system pilots, leaders captured more than 60X greater narrative detail during rounding interactions.

Beyond volume, documentation quality improved substantially. More than 90% of rounds now include complete, context-rich documentation—reducing reliance on shorthand notes and generating stronger signals for downstream analytics, operational decision-making, and coaching.

“We designed ambient listening with agentic AI so leaders can simply have a conversation and stay focused on the person in front of them while AI captures the details in the background,” said Katie Haifley, Director of Product at NRC Health. “Rather than adding work, we’re shifting time away from manual documentation and back into meaningful connection.”

Parkview Health, a 15-hospital health system serving Indiana and northwest Ohio, is an early adopter of the ambient listening feature, utilizing the functionality for their nurse leader rounds.

“We just pull up a chair, set the phone down, and have our conversations with our patients—and it has been wonderful,” said Julie Parrett, Assistant Manager at Parkview Hospital Randallia. “It’s so much more efficient, and it’s capturing things we wouldn’t have remembered or had time to document before.”

Another pilot site, south-central Missouri health system Phelps Health, found that rounds using ambient listening captured 5X more comment data, with AI generating the equivalent of five to six minutes of documentation per interaction on behalf of the rounder.

“It’s enhancing the insight we’re able to capture and creating more opportunities for our rounding to have greater impact,” said Emily Marie Jones, Director of Patient Experience at Phelps Health. “Over time, it will help us recognize patterns—like when a patient regularly feels cold or needs something specific—so we can better anticipate those needs and personalize their experience.”

By bringing AI enablement into everyday interactions, NRC Health is helping healthcare organizations move more quickly from insight to action, strengthening trust, improving performance, and reinforcing a culture where people feel heard, supported, and valued.

About NRC Health

For 45 years, NRC Health (NASDAQ: NRC) has led the charge to humanize healthcare and support organizations in their understanding of each unique individual. NRC Health’s commitment to Human Understanding helps leading healthcare systems get to know the patients, families, consumers, employees, and communities they serve on a human level. Guided by its uniquely empathic heritage, human-centered approach, unmatched national market research, and emphasis on consumer preferences, NRC Health is transforming the healthcare experience, creating strong outcomes across the healthcare journey.

The organization recently received the 2026 Best in KLAS Award for Healthcare Experience Management, independently validating NRC Health’s relentless pursuit of excellence in healthcare through innovation and deep partnerships that bring together its comprehensive experience management platform, advanced technology, and proven techniques to drive the most human healthcare experiences.

For more information, email [e-mail] or visit www.nrchealth.com.