In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has improved quickly and changed how organizations work. One important kind of AI is generative AI (GenAI). This technology makes new content or ideas using existing data. By 2023, generative AI became more than just a tool for simple automation. It started to play a bigger role in decision-making and planning strategies. This change is important for medical practice administrators, owners, and IT managers in the United States. Healthcare organizations face more pressure to be efficient, accurate, and save costs. Knowing how generative AI affects healthcare management and planning can help these professionals get ready for the future.
In 2023, about 55% of organizations in various industries in the United States said they use some form of AI in at least one area. About one-third of these use generative AI regularly. This shows that many are interested and adopting AI, but mostly in limited areas like product development, marketing, and customer service.
Healthcare has been slower to adopt AI because of privacy, compliance, and accuracy concerns. Still, growing workloads and complicated administration are pushing medical practices to think about AI tools to reduce work and improve patient care. Generative AI helps by automating simple tasks and also supporting more complex planning and decisions.
Generative AI has moved from just doing repetitive work to helping with planning and decision-making. This is true in fields needing careful budgeting, resource planning, and risk control, like healthcare.
Medical practice administrators can benefit from AI’s ability to analyze data without biases. Generative AI can quickly study past financial data, patient flow, resource use, and staffing needs. This helps administrators make better decisions about budgets or investments. They can make sure money goes to the areas that help most.
A recent survey found 70% of companies see AI as valuable and plan to spend more on it in 2024. This shows healthcare groups cannot ignore how AI is changing their priorities. In fact, healthcare might face more pressure to use AI because payers and regulators want better efficiency and care quality.
These AI tools save healthcare leaders from spending too much time on gathering and studying data. They can focus more on managing people and caring for patients.
AI use will change healthcare jobs. Instead of cutting jobs, experts expect many workers will need new skills. Almost 40% of organizations plan to retrain more than 20% of their staff because of AI. In healthcare, administrative workers will learn to use AI systems and focus on tasks like patient communication and care coordination.
Healthcare managers must plan for this change. Hiring may also shift to find people skilled in AI data science, information management, and prompt engineering. In clinics, new roles might maintain AI tools like automated phone systems or AI scheduling.
Generative AI greatly helps with workflow automation. Tasks like call centers, scheduling, and patient communication take a lot of staff time. Simbo AI, a company that makes AI phone automation and answering services, shows how AI can improve healthcare work.
With AI handling routine calls, questions, and bookings, front office staff have more time for harder tasks. This makes offices run more smoothly. Simbo AI uses AI that understands why callers call, gives correct answers, and sends calls to the right person fast.
Benefits of AI automation in healthcare include:
Since communication is one of the biggest admin tasks in healthcare, AI automation helps manage resources better and run operations smoothly. This fits well with AI goals for planning and using resources.
Besides phone automation, generative AI helps automate data reports, billing, and insurance claims. These time-consuming tasks get faster and more accurate with AI.
Even with benefits, using AI widely also brings challenges. Right now, only 21% of organizations have clear rules about AI use. This shows a gap in safe and legal AI adoption. Healthcare groups must focus on building rules to make sure AI tools follow laws and ethics, like HIPAA in the US.
Medical offices should set rules on using AI with attention to data privacy, accuracy, and responsibility. AI systems must be regularly checked to avoid mistakes that could cause money losses or harm patient care.
Handling these risks is part of making AI a reliable part of planning, not just an experiment.
Companies called AI high performers—those whose AI efforts give 20% or more of their earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT)—show strong commitment and wide AI use across many business areas. They spend over 20% of their digital budgets on AI and are three times more likely to retrain many workers.
In healthcare, top AI users invest both in AI tools that give quick returns and in experimental projects for future needs. This balanced approach helps them stay competitive and flexible in a fast-changing healthcare world.
Medical practices and health systems wanting to reach this level should align their AI plans with business goals. This makes sure AI supports patient care, operations, and finances together.
Using an AI-first view is important for healthcare leaders who want to keep up in 2024 and later. Planning should include AI insights at every step—from early trend studies and budget choices to following through and checking results.
Generative AI offers fair, data-based analysis that helps reduce decisions based on personal bias or limited facts. When healthcare managers use AI to predict service needs, test different futures, plan budgets well, and judge risks, they can respond faster to changes in patients, rules, and technology.
This trend shows that healthcare providers who don’t use generative AI now might be less ready for competition and new rules in the coming years.
By focusing on practical AI uses, workforce planning, and rules, medical administrators, owners, and IT staff in the United States can use generative AI to change how they make decisions and plan. AI is more than just a tool; it turns large amounts of data into useful advice that helps healthcare run better and succeed.
As of 2023, 55% of organizations have adopted AI in at least one function, with one-third using generative AI regularly in at least one area. However, adoption remains concentrated in limited business functions.
Generative AI is becoming a focus for company leaders, with over 40% of organizations planning to increase AI investment due to its advances. It is often on board agendas as firms explore its transformative potential.
The primary business functions leveraging generative AI include marketing and sales, product and service development, and service operations like customer care, indicating where organizations see the most value.
Organizations identified as AI high performers, which derive at least 20% of their EBIT from AI, are ahead in adopting generative AI tools and emphasize revenue creation over cost reduction.
Only 21% of organizations have established guidelines for generative AI use, and less than half are addressing risks such as inaccuracy, which is cited as a prevalent concern compared to cybersecurity.
Organizations are focusing on hiring data engineers, machine learning engineers, and roles in prompt engineering. Challenges remain, particularly in hiring machine learning engineers and AI product owners.
Respondents predict substantial reskilling rather than layoffs, with nearly 40% expecting to reskill over 20% of their workforce. However, service operations are expected to see some workforce reductions.
AI high performers are defined as organizations that attribute at least 20% of their EBIT to AI use. They are also more likely to use AI broadly across functions and in innovative ways.
Despite the rapid spread of generative AI, the overall adoption rate of AI across organizations has remained steady, indicating that while interest is high, broader AI implementation has not significantly increased.
Survey respondents anticipate significant disruption to competition due to generative AI, especially in knowledge-based industries like tech and finance, reflecting high expectations for its transformative impact.