UT Health San Antonio deployed an AI agent for a recent compliance shift, saving up to $80,000 annually.
The organization created the tool to meet Joint Commission certification requirements as it converted its ambulatory clinics to hospital outpatient departments in late 2025. The transition allows UT Health San Antonio to charge a facility fee after opening a new $472 million hospital in 2024. The solution was created in a matter of days via a partnership with AI startup Qualified Health.
“We were able to ensure 100% compliance with standing delegated orders,” Edward Sankary, MD, vice president and chief health information and value officer of UT Health San Antonio, told Becker’s. “That’s something that almost would be undoable [manually].”
He said Joint Commission surveyors were impressed and told the organization it was the first time they had seen technology used this way. He envisions it potentially becoming an industry standard.
As many health systems have found success using AI to ease documentation burden and streamline the revenue cycle, some are now shifting their attention to compliance. Marietta, Ga.-based Wellstar Health System, for instance, recently spun off an AI company to help peer organizations adhere to shifting regulatory requirements.
UT Health San Antonio’s tool eliminated the need to have a full-time staffer dedicated to manually reviewing the orders, saving four to eight hours of work every day.
The platform, integrated with Microsoft SharePoint, allows nurses, medical assistants and other healthcare professionals to query standing delegated orders in real time, with AI cross-checking and continuously auditing orders to ensure compliance.
“We actually have a dashboard that tracks how many orders said to be in an SDO did not meet that SDO,” Dr. Sankary explained. “So as a learning health system, we’re really able to ensure quality of orders. And that allows us to test out these standing delegated orders, which ultimately get converted into order sets in Epic.”
As that happens, the savings from the AI agent will taper over time but the technology will still come in handy as new standing delegated orders are requested, he said.
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