A Sept. 16 panel at Becker’s 11th Annual IT + Revenue Cycle Conference included a semantic argument that is becoming more substantive as artificial intelligence evolves: whether “AI” is a sufficient description anymore.
Brian Hasselfeld, MD, executive medical director of digital health and innovation at Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Medicine, said he had recently met with the American Medical Association and the Federation of State Medical Boards, where debates arose around autonomous clinical AI and how it should be regulated and licensed. The consensus in that room, he said, was that the technology is outgrowing the word “tool.”
“We’re moving towards thinking about this as intelligence,” Dr. Hasselfeld said. “It’s in the word. It’s in the moniker, and [we’re moving toward thinking of this] as labor, quite frankly.”
He said that reframing changes who makes purchasing decisions.
“If you start thinking about all of these opportunities not just as technology, which is a different decision-making set, a different skill set, but also as management of labor, which is a very different skill set, decision processes are going to change dramatically,” Dr. Hasselfeld said.
Emily Marlow, DNP, RN, interim associate chief operating officer for ambulatory care at Ann Arbor-based University of Michigan Health, was on the same page as Dr. Hasselfeld.
“I never liked the word tool, so I’m OK with moving away from that,” she said.
Dr. Marlow said the shift also matters practically because AI’s output now affects how she runs day-to-day operations, not just what software her team licenses.
That labor framing showed up directly in how the panelists described their vendor relationships. Dr. Hasselfeld said Johns Hopkins is pushing toward “at-risk models where KPIs drive cost for the vendor,” rather than paying a flat rate regardless of results. He said the traditional two-to-three-year contracting cycle is compressing to about 12 months, because health systems now need the ability to swap out underperforming tools quickly.
The panelists also discussed partner accountability. Toyosi Olutade, MD, chief medical officer for UnityPoint Health-Quad Cities, described the standard to which he now holds vendors: joint accountability for outcomes defined up front, not just a technology handoff.
“Besides the financial outcomes, can we get better patient care? Can we get better clinician experience? Can we reduce friction?” he said. “If I have to go through six additional clicks because of something that’s going to help me, it’s not helping the clinician. So the focus of our of our partnerships [is they] are going to be there to walk along and be jointly responsible for the outcomes that we both want to achieve.”
Dr. Marlow said Michigan Health is living an alternative. Several AI tools the system has implemented “aren’t giving us the metrics and the data and the time savings and the workforce changes that we are looking for,” adding that the health system often cannot exit contracts early.
“So then I’m pushing [the partner],” she said. “I need them to expand their tools or their AI capabilities.”
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