Saucedo v. Sharp HealthCare: class action says Abridge AI scribe recorded exam rooms without consent and wrote false 'patient consented' statements into charts
What happenedPatient Jose Saucedo filed a proposed class action in San Diego Superior Court in late November 2025 against Sharp HealthCare and its affiliated medical groups. Sharp had started using Abridge, an ambient AI app that records patient-clinician conversations and drafts clinical notes, in April 2025. Saucedo says that after a July 2025 visit to a Sharp Rees-Stealy clinic he discovered from his own visit notes that the appointment had been recorded. The suit claims Abridge automatically inserted incorrect statements into charts saying patients 'were advised' the visit was recorded and had 'consented,' even when no such conversation took place. It also alleges that Sharp obtained no written authorization, offered no opt-out, and let vendor personnel access recordings and transcripts. According to the complaint, Sharp apologized to Saucedo and said the audio could stay on the vendor's servers for about a month. Plaintiffs estimate more than 100,000 Sharp patients may have been recorded. The suit relies on California's all-party consent, wiretapping and medical confidentiality laws, and asks for damages, correction of medical records and an injunction. Sharp declined to comment on pending litigation. These are allegations that have not been tested in court.
Failure modeThe AI scribe allegedly generated boilerplate consent statements that were never verified and placed them in the medical record. That falsely documented informed consent for every visit it recorded and hid that consent was missing. The notes were apparently signed off without clinicians checking or correcting those statements.
What might have helpedCoverage of the case suggests several things that could have helped. Patients could have been asked for consent, and offered a way to decline, before recording began; KPBS reported that UC San Diego Health and Kaiser require consent. Clinicians could have checked statements of fact such as consent before signing AI-drafted notes, rather than letting template text become part of the record. Keeping consent as a step the clinician performs, and not text the AI generates, could have stopped the false attestations.
Mitigation: no published fix or mitigation found so far. Checked monthly; see what was tried elsewhere.