Follow the money: How AI technology could fit into accountable care

Where does artificial intelligence (AI) fall into management of accountable care? There is lots of potential — and maybe the final demise of the facsimile machine. Accountable for Health CEO Mara McDermott, JD, offers her perspective on how accountable care organizations can integrate new AI programs for a variety of tasks.

Medical Economics: How do you foresee AI playing a role both in detection of fraud, waste and abuse, and then administration of accountable care overall, and guiding patient treatment plans?

Medical Economics: How do you foresee AI playing a role both in detection of fraud, waste and abuse, and then administration of accountable care overall, and guiding patient treatment plans?

Mara McDermott, JD: Our segment, like everybody's segment, is rapidly adjusting to the idea of AI. We have had some early adopters that are using AI for different functions. Ambient listening I think is probably the most common one that I hear about from the accountable care organization community, but I think there is a lot of enthusiasm around the future of chart completion and even potentially risk adjustment, lots of conversations happening about all of those avenues at once. I always have to caveat this every time I talk about it with the fact that my health plan, who will remain nameless, is still doing an awful lot of transacting on fax. So it's like the last remaining customer of the fax machine is our American health care system, perhaps. So I think in my mind, I've been trying to sort of harmonize our. Like. we live in fax land today, with a potential future for AI, and I think we just have a long way to go, but lots of promising stuff happening. I think we are seeing some of the back-end office management use of AI, picking things up, making it easier, helping to manage patients, helping to check in with patients, and compliance, and all of those really good things I think many of us are starting to experience with our own physician offices today. So lots of promise and potential there. But I'm just still waiting for the extinction of the fax machine myself.