The healthcare sector is making significant strides toward the full implementation of AI, particularly when it comes to making revenue cycles, but gaps remain among decision makers when it comes to familiarity with the range of available technologies.

That’s according to a new study from Change Healthcare, which surveyed 200 revenue cycle, IT, finance, and c-suite decision makers.  Entitled “Poised to Transform: AI in the Revenue Cycle,” the study found that nearly all U.S. hospitals plan to be using AI across their revenue cycle within three years.

“AI is primed to transform revenue cycle management for those providers who understand how to use it strategically,” said Luyuan Fang, Ph.D., chief AI officer at Change Healthcare, in a press release. “Providers that close the gaps revealed by this research will be well-positioned to reap financial, operational, and clinical gains from the technology—including improving the end-to-end revenue cycle, claims accuracy, denial reduction, clinical insights, level-of-care prediction, and more. But this potential can only be realized when executive stakeholders are aligned on strategic deployment of AI and how to measure success.”

Currently, the study found, about two-thirds of all respondents (65%) report that they now use AI in Revenue Cycle Management (RCM), but AI’s application is limited and rarely spans the end-to-end revenue cycle. Similarly, only 12% of respondents consider their AI implementations to be mature today, with 35% expecting their implementations to be “early mainstream/fully mature” by 2023.

Overall, budget concerns are the leading cause of delay of initiating AI in RCM and full AI integration, researchers noted, with 75 percent of non-technical executives saying that budgetary concerns are the primary obstacle.  At the same time, however, 56 percent of providers reported liability, risk, and privacy concerns, while staffing, trust in information, and infrastructure challenges were other top reasons. 

In general, familiarity with AI and its impact varies among executives, IT, and revenue cycle leadership. But gaps in opinion are also impeding healthcare from taking full advantage of the transformative power of AI, researchers stressed. 

For example, researchers found an overwhelming majority (86 percent) of those in RCM roles see value in using AI in RCM compared to 52 percent of IT and 44 percent of executive and financial decision makers.

The full potential of AI “can only be realized when executive stakeholders are aligned on strategic deployment of AI and how to measure success,” noted Dr. Fang.