Industry Watcher’s Digest

Buzzworthy developments of the past few days.

• CIOs are commanding bigger paychecks than ever before. They’re also increasingly reporting directly to the CEO rather than, as in the past, a C-suite denizen of lesser rank. And they have the soaring demand for AI expertise to thank for both developments. One executive headhunter tells CIO.com compensation for both CIOs and CTOs has jumped more than 7% over the past year—and upward of 20% over the past five. Thing is, great expectations often come with ticking impatience. “When AI projects peter out, frustration builds, and ‘the fall guy happens to be the CIO,’” explains another executive expert. Read the rest.
   
• Care denials spiked 55.7% for Medicare Advantage claims between 2022 and 2023. Denials for commercial claims rose pretty sharply too, 20.2%, in that window. The American Hospital Association says you can thank AI algorithms for the unhappy trend. “Poor applications of these technologies can result in automatic denials of care without consideration of a patient’s individual clinical circumstances or review from a clinician or plan medical director as required,” AHA states in a September report. “In these situations, hospital staff must expend valuable time and resources to overturn inappropriate denials, adding unnecessary cost and burden to the healthcare system, and creating uncertainty for patients about whether their insurance will pay for their care.” Read the report. 
   
• The clinical documentation integrity (CDI) profession has remained mostly unchanged since at least 2008. AI is soon to shake it up. Revenue cycle veteran Glenn Krauss looks at the coming rebuild in an opinion piece published by ICD-10 Monitor. “Given the advancement of AI, ambient clinical intelligence tools and other AI-driven tools, there will soon be less opportunity for CDI as currently exists in the marketplace,” Krauss writes. “Change in present-day CDI practices is inevitable; pivoting away from a primary focus on diagnosis capture to an approach that incorporates the top 10 requirements of an effective CDI program will drive the achievement of far better and sustainable documentation.” If you want to consider the requirements to which he refers, click here. 
   
• Across the pond, physicians are conflicted about generative AI. In a new survey by Medscape UK, almost half of 745 respondents say they would not use the technology to care for patients while very close to the same number say they would consider it. Meanwhile some 86% worry about AI supplying patients with bad information and 82% fret over patients intent on self-diagnosis might take AI more seriously than their doctor. More results here. 
   
• Healthcare AI meets It’s a Wonderful Life. The result is a rough equivalent of the angel Clarence Oddbody showing AI what healthcare would be like had the technology never been born. Kamya Elawadhi, chief client officer of the healthtech startup Doceree, conducts the thought experiment at Forbes. Thinking through the “consequences of an AI-free healthcare system,” she describes delayed diagnoses and treatments, increased operational inefficiencies, reduced access to personalized medicine and compromised data-driven decision making. Ring a bell and get your wings here. 
   
• Anticipation over healthcare AI is bubbling just below the surface of daily life in Southeast Asia. The region’s digital healthcare market may reach $6 billion in 2024 revenues, and much of that will trace to the penetration of AI. The reporting is from Channel News Asia, or CNA, an English-language network based in Singapore. AI and other emerging technologies “can transform Southeast Asia’s rehabilitation efforts, aid critical diagnoses and streamline administrative processes,” journalist Rashvinjeet Bedi writes. “But for some in the sector, technology is not a cure-all. For those ‘entrenched in traditional methods,’ trust will take time to build, say experts.” Interesting reporting.
   
• Hustling the physician-patient relationship: Just one of 11 frights lurking in the dark side of large language models for healthcare. Researchers in France lay out the list in a paper published in The Lancet Regional Health: Europe. “Biases can emerge not merely because of biased datasets or algorithms but [also] because of factors involved in real-world implementation,” the authors warn. “Clinician-, patient-, and social-level factors can interact to create biases in the adoption of AI for clinical decision support.” Also making the list are disproportionate fashion, alienating work and—possibly losing something in translation—“humans under influence.” The journal has posted the paper in full for free.
   
• A dermatology practice is using AI to head off suspicious characters entering with drawn guns. “Unfortunately, we turn on the news and we see these events occur again and again,” explains Joshua Lane, MD, owner of the practice, to a local TV station in Columbus, Georgia. “And the ‘offering thoughts and prayers’ [routine] isn’t enough for us. We want to have action.” Lane Dermatology is probably not the first doctor’s office to go this route. And they probably won’t be the last. 
   
• Consumer news roundup:
   
  • Fast Company: AI in healthcare: A revolution in the making 
     
  • Time: How AI can help bring healthcare equity to women
     
  • TribLive: AI’s use in the medical field 
     
• Recent research in the news: 
   
  • University of East Anglia: Groundbreaking study will use AI to explore links between chronic inflammation, diet and long-term health conditions
     
  • University of Utah: Can chatbots help with genetic testing for cancer risk? 
     
  • University of Massachusetts: UMass Amherst researcher to use wearable sleep trackers, AI to predict early signs of Alzheimer’s
     
• AI funding news of note:
   
  • OpenAI reportedly in talks to raise $6.5B at $150B valuation
     
  • Children’s Health backs Pieces Technologies with $25M to advance AI in hospital care
     
• From AIin.Healthcare’s news partners:
   
  • Health Imaging: Many radiologists still unfamiliar with opportunistic screening applications
     
  • Radiology Business: FDA updates list of cleared VR, augmented reality devices, with radiology leading the way