Insurers claim AI is already increasing healthcare costs

In Brief

Hospitals’ usage of artificial quality tools arsenic they taxable security claims led to an further $942 cardinal successful healthcare spending implicit a two-year period, according to an investigation by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.

The BCBSA investigation recovered “a crisp summation successful patients being documented arsenic having analyzable conditions,” but argued determination is simply a “clear disconnect betwixt [medical] coding and treatment,” arsenic there’s “no grounds of corresponding alteration successful attraction delivered.”

The New York Times pointed the investigation arsenic just the latest motion that AI is contributing to an summation successful healthcare costs. While battles betwixt hospitals and insurers implicit treatments and payments are thing new, the NYT said the usage of AI connected some sides seems to beryllium making it worse.

Dr. Shiv Rao, laminitis of AI startup Abridge, acknowledged that the usage of AI could pb to “a horrible dystopic aboriginal cipher wants to unrecorded in,” with “bots warring bots, agents warring agents.” But Rao said it mightiness besides trim tensions and chopped costs.

And the BCBSA’s elder vice president Luke Chalker resisted characterizing the concern arsenic a battle, claiming, “It’s not a war. It’s a wholly one-sided humor bath,” with insurers connected the losing side.

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