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Diving overview:
Artificial intelligence has the potential to alleviate harmful labor issues facing the healthcare sector, but healthcare systems will need to increase spending on cybersecurity to address growing risks, according to a Moody's Ratings report. It is said that there is. The credit rating agency says this new technology could help staff recruitment and retention through tools that allow nurses to choose more flexible schedules and help clinicians document clinical care. It is said that there is a sex. However, new technology also brings additional vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit. This is already a challenge for the healthcare industry, which relies on IT systems to store sensitive and valuable patient data.
Dive Insight:
AI has become one of the most attractive technologies for healthcare executives, and new tools could help reduce heavy administrative workloads for healthcare systems and help manage workforce shortages and clinician burnout. Expectations are rising.
According to Moody's, using AI to summarize clinical information allows healthcare providers to see more patients and focus on higher-level tasks. One product used by St. Louis-based Mercy Inc. allows nurses to choose shifts of varying lengths and uses AI to match their experience and qualifications to available shifts. This has the potential to attract nursing talent in a tight labor market.
AI-assisted clinical documentation is another big use case, where tools typically record conversations between patients and healthcare professionals and generate draft notes. According to a Moody's report, this technology saves Texas Health Resources an average of 5.5 hours of documentation time per physician per week.
AI could eventually play a larger role in diagnosis and treatment as well. The technology can analyze medical data to find patterns that human clinicians might miss, potentially leading to earlier diagnosis, Moody's said.
Better data analysis can help healthcare systems manage their operations. Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai leverages AI to monitor local health data to better predict hospital bed capacity and improve supply needs during spikes in infectious disease cases, according to a report It is said that they are doing so. The health system says AI has shown 85-95% accuracy in modeling bed demand for diseases such as influenza and COVID-19.
However, with the introduction of AI, the healthcare sector must address new challenges, including increased vulnerability to cyberattacks and data breaches.
Cyberattacks already pose a serious risk to hospital operations, in some cases cutting off access to critical technology systems and forcing hospitals to delay treatment or divert emergency cases. Healthcare organizations are already increasing their cybersecurity budgets and staffing as threats increase, according to a Moody's report released this spring.
The increased risks posed by AI will also require health systems to increase their cyber defense spending and may also need to address regulatory challenges when implementing AI.
“(…) Introducing AI into clinical practice requires careful human oversight to address issues such as false responses and the risk of perpetuating bias in the data, and potential “This raises legal and equity concerns,” the report's authors wrote.
Healthcare systems must also adapt to the use of AI by insurance companies. Moody's says payers are already using AI to adjudicate claims, automatically denying late claims or claims that don't follow strict coding standards.
Lawmakers have previously criticized Medicare Advantage plans for using algorithms to delay or deny medical care that would have been covered by traditional Medicare, and some insurers have It is facing lawsuits over its practices. Providers may need to invest more time and money into revenue cycle management to compensate for the increase in claim denials.
