Tech Check: Tenet and HCA CEOs Talk AI at Wells Conference
During the past two years or more, CEOs and CFOs of large health services companies have frequently and eagerly told analysts and investors that their teams are using artificial-intelligence tools to identify and counter ways that their rascally counterparts at insurance companies are trying to trim payments. And those insurance executives have just as frequently and eagerly voiced their pride at how their teams are using AI to stop those rascally providers from overbilling.
So is what we have here an arms race that’s reinforcing stereotypes and escalating the tit-for-tat between hospitals and plans? A tech-reinforced standoff that’s limiting progress in an important process while AI notches impressive results in other parts of the industry?
Not at all, Tenet Healthcare Corp. Chairman and CEO Sutaria told attendees of the recent Wells Fargo 21st Annual Healthcare Conference in Boston. Dismissing the idea of an arms race without a result, Sutaria said that adjudicating and processing payments “costs too much for everybody” and added that AI is delivering results on that front.
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“Even if all sides ‘arm up’ with automation and AI and other things, we’re still [bringing] the amount of cost and waste that goes into adjudication of claims down in total,” Sutaria said. “That’s good. There’s more to reinvest in healthcare services from that perspective […] I don’t think there’s anything negative about bringing the overall cost structure for both sides of the industry down in terms of what it costs to adjudicate a claim.”
Sam Hazen, Sutaria’s CEO counterpart at HCA Healthcare Inc., sported a similarly positive tone at the Wells gathering when it came to discussing AI. Hazen said his team sees the biggest opportunities for the technology as being in how it can improve the work environment for HCA’s clinical teams, something he called “the holy grail in many ways for us.”
HCA has been rolling out ambient listening technology to be used by its physicians and Hazen said that will soon be expanded to include nurses, who also will get an AI-assisted handoff tool focused on patient safety. Other investments also are underway, Hazen added, and HCA’s overall AI efforts aren’t yet profitable because of that even if some initiatives are starting to produce a return on investment.
“We do have opportunities in revenue cycle. We have opportunities in HR. We have opportunities in IT. Those are all moving as well,” Hazen said. “But they don’t have sort of the scaled effects potentially that we see in our facilities” from having AI improve clinical teams’ workflows and surroundings.
About the Author
Geert De Lombaerde
A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has more than two decades of business journalism experience and writes about markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications Healthcare Innovation, IndustryWeek, FleetOwner, Oil & Gas Journal and T&D World. With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati and later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal. Most recently, he oversaw the online and print products of the Nashville Post for more than a decade and reported primarily on Middle Tennessee’s finance sector as well as many of its publicly traded companies.