Does CareStack have a native AI scribe?

Yes. CareStack documents a CareStack AI Scribe in its own help center: AI-assisted voice notes that transcribe ambiently inside the charting module and update the clinical note as you go. It sits inside a broader AI Suite where several other modules — case acceptance, reputation management — are still marked coming soon on CareStack's own pages, so confirm with your rep which pieces are live on your build before you assume the whole suite is included. CareStack does not publish a price for it; quote only.

Why do fewer AI scribes support CareStack than Open Dental?

Because the integration path is narrower. Open Dental publishes a free public vendor register — 87 Authorized vendors, 11 Authorized In Transition, 22 in a tier it labels Dangerous/Unknown, 11 Not Currently Active, plus 14 Native Integrations — and any vendor can apply for a listing by email at no charge. CareStack's developer program requires registration and meters API usage, and its public portal documents patient, medical-condition, payment, communication, document and treatment-code resources without a public clinical-notes write endpoint. Vendors who cannot get a documented write path reach the chart through the browser instead.

What is wrong with a scribe that pastes into CareStack instead of using the API?

It works until the screen changes. A paste or browser-automation path depends on field positions, DOM structure and login state, so a CareStack release can break note filing with no error anyone sees until a chart audit turns up empty visits. Ask any vendor two questions: does the note write through a documented API on CareStack specifically, and what happens to a note when the write fails? A vendor with a real queue and retry will answer immediately. A vendor who answers about a different PMS is telling you something.

How accurate are AI clinical notes, really?

The best peer-reviewed number I know of comes from JMIR Medical Informatics. Across 7,545 ambient notes, with 356 formally evaluated, 18% contained accidental omissions, 11.5% contained hallucinations and 9.3% contained accidental inclusions. Omission is both the most common of the three and the hardest to catch, because a note that is missing your caries risk discussion still reads perfectly. Almost no vendor measures or surfaces omissions, so plan on reading every note before you sign it.

Do any AI scribes actually delete the audio?

Some say so plainly on their own sites. Claio states that audio is processed in real time and never stored. Heidi states that no audio is stored. Intake.Dental — which is my own product, so discount this accordingly — keeps dictation audio in memory only and retains transcript text for 24 hours so an interrupted recording can be resumed; its separate opt-in, consent-gated recording features do store audio, which is a different promise. Denti.AI's privacy policy says the opposite of all of these: voice data is collected and retained as long as necessary. Get whichever answer you are given written into the BAA, not the sales deck.

Will notes from a third-party scribe be attributed to the right provider?

It depends entirely on the PMS, and this is worth testing before you sign. Dentrix Ascend exposes a real provider field, so the note files against a provider record. An Open Dental commlog has no provider field at all, so the provider's name has to be written into the note body itself. Do not accept a generic claim of structured provider attribution across every PMS — including from me. Run a test note on your own system and look at who the chart says wrote it.

Best AI Clinical Notes for CareStack (2026)

Facts & pricing verified August 19, 2026

I practice general and sleep dentistry, and I also build one of the products on this list.

Disclosure, up front rather than buried at the bottom: Intake.Dental is my own product, and it is ranked #3 below. I have tried to be harder on it than on anything above or below it, and you will see it fail this page’s own CareStack test in exactly the way most of this list fails it. If you would rather not read a ranking written by a vendor, the honest move is to stop here — but the CareStack question is a technical one, and I have spent real hours inside CareStack’s API deciding what my own product could and could not promise.

Here is what a CareStack practice needs to understand before comparing feature lists. The dental AI scribe market grew up around Open Dental, which publishes a free, public vendor register — 87 Authorized vendors, 11 Authorized In Transition, 22 in a tier it labels Dangerous/Unknown, 11 Not Currently Active, and 14 native integrations — plus an email address any vendor can write to for a listing at no cost. That register is why an Open Dental practice can shop safely: someone else has already done the diligence and published the result. CareStack publishes nothing equivalent. Its integrations directory has a Clinical category, and exactly one entry in it is an AI note vendor.

The second constraint is the write surface. CareStack’s developer portal documents patient information, medical conditions, payment summary, patient communication, patient documents and treatment codes. I do not see a public clinical-notes write endpoint, and access to the program is registered and metered rather than free and open. So a vendor who wants to put a note in a CareStack chart has three options: be CareStack, hold partner-tier access, or drive the browser. A surprising number choose the third and describe it as an integration.

Finally, the accuracy baseline. In JMIR Medical Informatics, across 7,545 ambient notes with 356 formally evaluated, 18% had accidental omissions, 11.5% had hallucinations and 9.3% had accidental inclusions. Omissions are the most common of the three failures and the least detectable. No vendor below solves that. You still read every note.

One note on money before the list: none of the seven vendors here publishes a price for its scribe. Every figure you will be quoted is quote-only and per-practice, and I have no third-party reported pricing I can stand behind for any of them as of August 2026. Where I say “quote-only” below, I mean the vendor publishes nothing — not that I found a number and am withholding it.

1. CareStack AI Scribe

The built-in option is the default to beat, and on CareStack that is a stronger argument than it would be anywhere else. CareStack’s AI-assisted voice notes transcribe ambiently inside the charting module and update the note as you work. There is no integration layer, no paste step, no partner API to be deprecated. When the vendor and the chart are the same company, the note cannot fail to land because a screen moved.

What I hold against it: the wider AI Suite is partly aspirational — case acceptance and reputation management are labeled coming soon on CareStack’s own page — so confirm what is actually live on your build rather than what is on the marketing page. Pricing is quote-only, published nowhere. I cannot find a published statement about whether session audio is retained, which for a scribe is a question you should not have to ask twice. And it is a one-way door: nothing you build here follows you if you leave CareStack.

Buy it if you want the fewest moving parts and you are staying on CareStack. Push hard on retention and on which modules are shipping today.

2. Heidi

Heidi is the only AI note-taking vendor listed in CareStack’s own Clinical integrations category, which on a platform this closed is a real signal. The workflow is native-feeling: an AI Scribe button inside the CareStack patient chart, ambient transcription, review, then transfer into the chart. Heidi’s own site states that no audio is stored and that transcription happens in real time within your jurisdiction. That is a better privacy answer than most dental-specific vendors give, and it is published rather than offered on request.

The caveat is the mechanism. Heidi describes a Magic Paste function that transfers data into the correct fields in CareStack. Read that literally — it is field population, not a documented chart write. It works well and it is officially sanctioned, but it inherits the fragility of anything that depends on the screen looking the way it looked last month. Ask Heidi directly what happens when a paste target moves.

The other caveat is that Heidi is a general clinical scribe with dental customers, not a dental product. Its perio, CDT and chart-specific behavior is weaker than a dental-native tool, and your templates will be your own work. Pricing is quote-only.

3. Intake.Dental

This is my product, as I said at the top. Here is the same test I apply to everyone else on this page, applied to me.

Which endpoint does the CareStack note write use? I cannot show you a documented public clinical-notes write endpoint on CareStack, because as far as I can tell one does not exist for third parties. Nobody on this list except CareStack itself can show you one. So take the sentence you will hear from every vendor here — “notes file straight to the chart” — and scope it the way I have to scope mine: on Open Dental and Dentrix Ascend, the approved note files into the patient’s chart through the PMS API, dated to the visit, not as a PDF and not in a separate tab. On CareStack, ask me the same endpoint question I tell you to ask Denti.AI in the next section, and hold me to the same standard if the answer is a browser.

The mechanics I will stand behind: you dictate, the system produces a structured note, a provider approves it, and signed notes are never rewritten — corrections file as dated addenda, which is the behavior any board would expect. Dictation audio is never written to disk, S3 or a database; it lives in memory only, with transcript text kept 24 hours so an interrupted recording can be resumed or a finished one continued. A hygienist walking in mid-dictation should not cost you the note. Separate opt-in, consent-gated recording features do store audio, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. PHI is encrypted at the field level and there is a signed BAA. There is more detail on the note pipeline, approval and audio handling if you want the mechanism rather than the pitch.

One honest asymmetry: attribution behavior differs by PMS. On Dentrix Ascend the note files against a real provider field. On Open Dental, a commlog has no provider field at all, so the provider’s name is written into the note body itself — I will not claim structured attribution there, and you should test your own PMS rather than take my word for it. The same discipline applies on CareStack.

The CareStack-specific limits, since this is a CareStack page and you deserve them named: I am not on CareStack’s published integrations directory, the way Heidi is. There is no public clinical-notes write endpoint for me to point at. Anything I do on that platform is subject to a metered, registered developer program I do not control, which means my rate limits and my roadmap are partly CareStack’s to set. If you are on CareStack today and you want a documented, platform-acknowledged path, the honest answer is CareStack’s own scribe or Heidi, not me.

And the company weaknesses. Founded 2025. Small installed base. No multi-year public review history and no published third-party reviews. Denti.AI’s clinical volume dwarfs mine and it is not close. If you need vendor references from a fifty-location DSO, I am the wrong call this year.

Where it does win is scope: one integration also covers intake forms, eligibility verification, payment posting, treatment plans and scheduling, so if you were going to buy a scribe and a verification tool and a forms product separately, the consolidation is the argument — not the notes alone. Per-system limits differ, and on Open Dental appointment status updates, cancellation and perio charting are not supported.

4. Denti.AI

Denti.AI is a dedicated dental ambient scribe rather than a medical product with a dental skin, and it has named DSO references that nobody else here has. It lists CareStack among a long PMS list — Dentrix, Dentrix Ascend, Denticon, CareStack, Open Dental, Eaglesoft, ClearDent, ABELDent, Curve, Oryx — and says notes save straight to the patient record with no copy-paste and nothing to install on your server.

Two things temper that. First, CareStack’s own integrations directory does not list Denti.AI, while it does list Heidi. A vendor-claimed integration and a platform-acknowledged one are different objects, and on a closed platform the difference usually points at the browser. Ask them, specifically, which endpoint the CareStack note write uses — the same question I answered about myself above, and did not answer well.

Second, retention. Denti.AI’s own privacy policy states that voice data is collected and retained as long as necessary. That is not a discard guarantee, and it is the opposite of what Claio and Heidi commit to in writing. Also worth knowing: on Open Dental’s public register, Denti.AI sits in Authorized In Transition, not Authorized. Our fuller breakdown of Denti.AI goes into the scribe and perio products separately. Pricing is quote-only.

5. Claio

I rank Claio first on most Open Dental pages, and it is genuinely frustrating to rank it fifth here. It is the only vendor I have found that answers both of the questions that actually matter, unprompted, on its own site: notes go straight into your PMS, filed to the patient’s chart, not a separate tab or portal; and audio is processed in real time and never stored. Ambient capture, dental-native, perio built in, coding support.

And its published integration list — Dentrix, Open Dental, Eaglesoft, Dentitek, Curve, Cloud9, Denticon, Dentrix Ascend, Dentrix Enterprise, Orthotrac, MacPractice, XLDent — does not include CareStack. So this is a watchlist entry, not a purchase. If you are mid-PMS-decision, or you run a mixed group where most locations are not on CareStack, get Claio on the demo list. Pricing is per license and quote-only.

6. Bola AI

Bola holds something rare: a native integration on Open Dental’s list rather than merely an Authorized listing, meaning a first-party bridge rather than a third-party one. Voice perio charting is the real product, and perio measurements save into Open Dental properly. One operational detail people discover late — enabling Bola’s bridge disables Open Dental’s own built-in perio microphone, so you cannot quietly run both.

None of that is available to you on CareStack. I include Bola because a CareStack group evaluating a PMS migration should know what the Open Dental ecosystem offers that CareStack’s does not, and because voice perio is the clearest example of it. Audio retention is not something I can find published, and pricing is quote-only; press on both. There is more in our Open Dental add-on roundup.

7. ScribeHealth.ai

I am including this one as the cautionary case rather than a recommendation. ScribeHealth markets a zero-storage voice policy, which sounds like exactly the right answer. Then look at the surrounding facts: Open Dental places it in the Dangerous/Unknown tier of its public register — the tier for direct database access or unwhitelisted plugins — its published integration list names Epic, Cerner and Athena but no dental PMS at all, and the delivery mechanism it offers is a Chrome extension.

A Chrome extension plus no PMS integrations is a screen-scraping architecture. On CareStack that means a scribe reaching your chart the same way a temp with your password would. It may well work on the day you demo it. Listing on Open Dental’s register is free, so a Dangerous/Unknown tier is a safety judgment rather than a pay-to-play outcome, and I would treat it as disqualifying until the vendor explains what changed.

What I would actually do

If you are staying on CareStack and want the fewest failure modes, start with CareStack’s own scribe and make them answer the audio-retention question in writing. If the native tool is not good enough, Heidi is the sanctioned third party and the honest one about audio, and it is the only third party CareStack itself lists. If you want the note pipeline plus verification and intake on one rail, and you can tolerate a young vendor with no documented CareStack write path, mine is worth a look — with the caveat that I have just spent a section explaining why a CareStack practice specifically has better options.

Whatever you choose, run the same test: dictate a note with a deliberately unusual finding, sign it, then open the chart from a different workstation an hour later and confirm the finding is there, dated correctly, attributed correctly. Omissions are the failure mode that hides best, because the note still reads well without them. Find out on your own chart, in week one, not in an audit.