The takeover of healthcare by AI

This is just one company out there, https://www.lindy.ai/medical-scribe?utm_source=x&utm_medium=ad&utm_campaign=caro&utm_term=333&utm_content=1223

I have a strong conflict with the use of AI. First off, they are wanting us to record patient conversations that AI then converts into a written note. My concern is who is listening to that data as it is being transcribed. Where is it databanked? Who is storing that private conversation between patient and provider? Who can listen to that at any point? Can insurance companies listen to that conversation if they want to?

My other concern about AI transcribing is that if for some reason the data is not transcribed corrrectly, you have an inaccurate patient note documented. I have had more than a handful of conversations with patients where they have asked that what they are about to tell me not go in their note. Marital issues, drug use history, etc. Sensitive and personal information that is no business to anyone else aside from the provider patient relationship. Things that could be used against a patient if it was in the wrong hands.

The third issue I have with AI is that it is already being used to retrospective audit patients notes by insurance companies. Blue Cross has a portion of their company that is now managed by Lucent Healthcare. Your plan is Blue Cross, but Lucent is the carrier that manages the plan. When they acquired that portion of Blue Cross, Lucent has now used AI to audit EVERY SINGLE CHART of a patient that they now cover that we see in my office, going back to 2021 and 2022. They were attempting to dispute claims and asking for tens of thousands of dollars back due to the AI audit of the charts. My office spent weeks putting together an appeal of this Lucent decision and thankfully, due to the diligence of our office management staff, they whittled down what Lucent wanted paid back to a few thousand dollars instead of over $55,000. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the notes we submitted to Blue Cross, Lucent is just attempting to make money off of old patient charts. That should be illegal. Lucent didn’t even manage or own those accounts for the time period they are AI auditing.

I am about ready to go back to paper charting. Electronic EMR’s are handy, but I worry about the safety of them going forward.