Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1531585
22 INNOVATION How 3 of the largest health systems are using AI By Naomi Diaz I n 2024, major health systems embraced artificial intelligence across various applications, including easing documentation burdens, revenue cycle, and addressing claims denials. Here's a look at how the three largest health systems leveraged AI in 2024, as reported by Becker's: Ascension (St. Louis): In May, Nashville, Tenn.-based Ascension Saint omas began utilizing egnite's CardioCare technology, an AI-powered platform designed to enhance cardiovascular care. e platform helps physicians identify at-risk patients earlier, aiming to reduce deaths, strokes, and hospitalizations. It also facilitates timely referrals to specialists for conditions like valvular disease, atrial fibrillation, and heart failure while prioritizing life-saving treatments. Furthermore, it ensures patients with critical cardiovascular conditions receive care consistent with established medical guidelines. By August, Ascension Saint omas expanded its use of AI by introducing an AI-powered administrative assistant for its second- and third-year internal medicine residents. rough this initiative, residents can leverage Suki, an AI healthcare assistant, to alleviate documentation burdens. CommonSpirit Health (Chicago): In March, CommonSpirit unveiled its proprietary AI assistant, Insightli. is tool enables the organization to generate written content securely, eliminating the risks associated with sharing sensitive information externally. HCA Healthcare (Nashville, Tenn.): HCA Healthcare has been using Google's AI-powered nurse-handoff note. e nurse handoff note allows providers to leverage artificial intelligence to improve workflows on time-consuming clerical tasks. e tool was developed by HCA using Google's AI and is being tested at four HCA Healthcare hospitals in Tennessee and Florida. Additionally, during an October earnings call, HCA Healthcare CEO Sam Hazen described the organization as being at an "inflection point" with artificial intelligence, highlighting the tangible benefits the health system has begun to realize. He pointed to AI's role in optimizing staff scheduling through patient demand forecasting and workforce allocation, as well as its impact on the revenue cycle, including managing receivables and addressing claims denials. Also in October, HCA announced a partnership with Commure to develop and implement an ambient AI platform across its network of healthcare professionals. e collaboration has produced a multi- specialty, EHR-agnostic platform designed to enhance critical workflows in emergency departments, hospitalist operations, and ambulatory care settings. n Got cash for the AI babysitter? By Molly Gamble H ealth systems have spent years emphasizing the need to control costs, especially as reimbursement rates and inflation failed to keep pace with operational demands. In 2025, these cost-containment efforts will persist, and with an added challenge: the expenses of adopting AI tools and the "babysitters" needed to oversee them. Such is the takeaway of an article from CBS News and KFF Health News, which checks in with numerous health system technology and AI leaders on the labor needs associated with AI investments. Right now it's a paradox: While AI tools are often touted as the future of efficiency and automation, they currently demand significant human oversight and attention to function properly. "Everybody thinks that AI will help us with our access and capacity and improve care and so on," Nigam Shah, PhD, chief data scientist at Stanford Health Care, told the outlets. "All of that is nice and good, but if it increases the cost of care by 20%, is that viable?" AI comes with its own set of challenges, including algorithm decay — where predictive accuracy diminishes over time. Integrating these tools into health system operations requires continuous monitoring and dedicated staffing to ensure fairness, reliability and effectiveness. At Stanford, Dr. Shah revealed that auditing two AI models for reliability took eight to 10 months and 115 hours of manual labor. The tricky part isn't determining whether the tools work — but whether they continue to work. And then there is another part of the problem: many health systems lack the talent and infrastructure to meet these demands. The FDA noted this risk earlier in 2024, with FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, MD, expressing concern that health systems do not have the infrastructure and tools to make the most important determinations about whether an AI application is effective for health outcomes. "I have looked far and wide," Dr. Califf said at a recent agency panel on AI. "I do not believe there's a single health system, in the United States, that's capable of validating an AI algorithm that's put into place in a clinical care system." Health system leaders have also expressed healthy skepticism about how much transformation is possible when AI solutions are layered on top of fragmented or flawed systems that are widespread in healthcare. n