How AI could be helpful for hospital operations and healthcare workers
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What is UnitedHealth tracking about employee AI tool usage?
time for our daily tech and business report united health has been tracking how often some of its employees use ai tools as the healthcare giant invests in the tech in order to transform its operations for details we turn to the kcbs ring central news line and speak with bloomberg's john tozzi john what exactly is united health trying to discern from getting tracking this
Yeah, well, the company has said they're leaning very heavily into artificial intelligence, investing $1.5 billion in the technology this year. And what we found out is that they're tracking how their employees are using the artificial intelligence tools, things like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Microsoft's Copilot. and actually have kind of internal dashboards to monitor how people are using the technology.
I know that a lot of doctors will use it for post-appointment notes because then they don't have to keep writing stuff down and then they don't have to try and scribe stuff later on. What's the kind of purpose that UnitedHealth has for AI?
Yeah.
How are doctors and clinicians using AI for post‑appointment notes?
So, I mean, just UnitedHealth, a big company with both health insurance operations, and it's a UnitedHealthcare business, and then other services, including direct health care delivery in a division called Optum. And it sounds like they're using it in lots of different applications. You know, they've talked about things like call center, millions of calls online. avoided through AI applications, also adjudicating medical claims. They've talked about systems that are intended to speed up how quickly medical claims can be processed, and then also writing code for software applications are among the things that we know about.
I guess we have to get used to talking to a chatbot when we have something to resolve. The more and more companies turn to something like this for, say, their customer service.
Which operational areas (call centers, claims processing, coding) is UnitedHealth applying AI to?
Yeah, I mean, I think that's something that we're probably seeing broadly across many industries. And, I mean, you think of something like healthcare, you know, where lots of consumers and, you know, providers have things that they, you know, need to resolve and pick up the phone to do that. And I think, you know, companies across the industry are leaning into AI to kind of help speed up that process and, you know, reduce the reliance on human call center services. workers.
Yeah, well, that'll mean a lot of jobs lost.
Potentially, yeah. I mean, I don't think we know fully the implications of whether it results in job loss or kind of increases the volume of cases a company can handle with their existing workforce.
Will AI adoption lead to job losses or increase workforce efficiency in healthcare?
And we don't have anything specific in the story about that.
Now, UnitedHealth has talked about risks to their increasing use of AI. What were they?
Yeah, I mean, you know, one of the things companies do every year in their annual report is disclose risk factors, all sorts of things that could, you know, potentially have implications for the companies. And in UnitedHealth's annual report this year, there was sort of a new heading around AI risks. And they, you know, broadly kind of noted that The increasing use of AI could create risks to its business, legal and regulatory risks, and they cited the potential for inaccurate, incomplete, or biased output that might affect operations or financial results.
What legal, regulatory, and bias risks does UnitedHealth identify for its AI initiatives?
Obviously, those are the kind of disclosures companies do around lots of things. But I think it's worth keeping in mind around, you know, as we see more and more of corporate America embracing these technologies, what are the risks if something goes wrong?
All technology is double-edged sword, right? John, thanks so much for the reporting and for the time. That is Bloomberg's John Tozzi. You can hear our tech and business report weekdays at 1230 here on KCBS. And for more, catch Bloomberg Technology weekdays at 8 a.m.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is UnitedHealth tracking about employee AI tool usage?
0:00–1:16
2
How are doctors and clinicians using AI for post‑appointment notes?
1:16–2:11
3
Which operational areas (call centers, claims processing, coding) is UnitedHealth applying AI to?
2:11–3:01
4
Will AI adoption lead to job losses or increase workforce efficiency in healthcare?
3:01–3:49
5
What legal, regulatory, and bias risks does UnitedHealth identify for its AI initiatives?
3:49–4:23
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from KCBS Bloomberg Tech and Business Report
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