Health systems are reassigning duties and reallocating personnel because of AI and automation — or at least having conversations with employees that it’s coming, CIOs and digital leaders told Becker’s.
AI has already started to replace some healthcare jobs and duties, though any mass displacement of humans by the technology has been overhyped, leaders say. Other health systems, typically smaller ones, say they’ve yet to be affected.
“Almost all of our AI and automations to date have shifted the nature of the daily work done by our staff, or allowed us to eliminate vacancies, rather than laying off existing staff,” said Lee Schwamm, senior vice president and chief digital health officer of Yale New Haven (Conn.) Health.
That includes automated Medicaid coverage checks, work previously done by financial counselors. Rather than performing manual Department of Social Services lookups, those staffers now spend more time in the emergency department enrolling patients in coverage face-to-face.
Also, video-enabled kiosks at clinical practices ensure patients can always connect with an employee virtually during low-volume or extended hours. “This helps support multiple locations with real-time assistance when it isn’t always practical or desirable to have a staff member physically sitting in every location,” Dr. Schwamm said.
Yale New Haven Health is also offering basic AI literacy training to IT and digital teammates and identifying champions for more advanced instruction and leadership opportunities.
“We are building an AI Center of Excellence, which will support our internal digital teams in continuing to deliver exceptional digital experiences powered by AI, and encouraging team members to reinvent how their current job will be performed in the future,” Dr. Schwamm said.
Omaha-based Children’s Nebraska has also saved time for its patient access department by using agentic AI to determine patients’ Medicaid eligibility, freeing up an estimated 5,824 hours annually. The four-person staff had previously spent about 70% of their shifts on legacy transactional tasks.
“In the AI era, we’re focused on opportunities where AI repurposes time back, so that our team members can invest into working with families in-person,” said Ryan Cameron, EdD, chief information and innovation officer of Children’s Nebraska. “Care is personal, and AI can open powerful opportunities to find the time we need to support patients and families directly.”
Canton, Ohio-based Aultman Health System is redeploying employees who used to manually manage IT workflows to now act as the “human in the loop” on AI, said CIO Raza Fayyaz. These AI system specialists are moving from the “doers” of repetitive tasks to “auditors and strategists” of newly automated processes.
“The key reason this strategy is working is because of our transparency,” Mr. Fayyaz said. “Our goal has been to ensure the staff understands the AI is there to take the ‘robot’ out of the human, not the human out of the job.”
Oskaloosa, Iowa-based Mahaska Health hasn’t yet repositioned any teams due to AI, but leadership has begun having discussions with workers apprehensive about the technology’s incursion.
“In healthcare especially, AI still needs human judgment, accountability, local workflow knowledge, and compassion,” said Bob Berbeco, CIO of the one-hospital system. “My core message is a job title and responsibilities may change over time due to AI, but having adaptability, curiosity and willingness to continually learn will enable a career to flourish through the changes.”
New Bedford, Mass.-based Southcoast Health, a three-hospital system, is “nowhere near” having to reduce headcount because of AI, said Jim Feen, senior vice president and chief digital and information officer.
“We were an exceptionally lean organization before this train started, so in many ways the investments are helping us automate staff or clinician workload that was a rate-limiting factor to the supply-and-demand paradigm,” he said.
As AI makes greater inroads into healthcare, health system executives say they’ll continue to assure staffers that humans remain at the forefront.
“We increasingly are linking change management, organizational development and AI technology because healthcare is a people-focused industry with patients and clinicians at the center,” said James Whitfill, MD, senior vice president of strategic partnerships and chief transformation officer of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based HonorHealth. “If we lose sight of the people delivering care and the people receiving care, we will lose our mission focus.”
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