Artificial Intelligence (AI) has unlocked new possibilities that are pushing boundaries in healthcare. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs partnered with an AI company to create a system that diagnoses a deadly kidney disease up to 48 hours faster than a human could.
Virtual patients are utilized by medical schools, and Moxi the robot can be found in a Philadelphia-area hospital, performing non-clinical tasks so nurses can focus on their patients. The CDC says AI was even used as a research and public health tool at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. AI advancements are quickly reshaping the healthcare experience for both the provider and the patient.
Beyond its critical uses in life-saving equipment, diagnosis, and treatment, AI can be harnessed to create innovative solutions on the administrative side — particularly through payment technologies. Let’s dive into three ways AI can improve healthcare outside the exam room.
Provide Accurate Cost Estimates
Healthcare is the only industry that arranges a service to a client (or in this case, a patient) without the client knowing the cost of the service up-front. However, government regulation surrounding price transparency has increased with the recent passing of the Health Care PRICE Transparency Act and the Transparency in Coverage Rule. As elected leaders continue the push for transparency through legislation, AI-based software will help execute those initiatives and allow for practices to report accurate up-front costs.
AI can quickly analyze trends in a data set of payments to then create a database of typical charges for a given type of service or insurance. That would give patients — at the very least — a predicted range for the cost of an appointment or procedure. It wouldn’t be an exact number, but at least patients would have some sort of idea of how much money they will be spending. This would create more transparency between the provider and patient, therefore increasing trust in the relationship. AI is going to help the healthcare industry handle costs and payments in a clearer, more open way.
