AI adoption in ASCs is stratified widely across the industry, with many facilities focusing on AI’s use cases in back-office functions while others look to integrate it more closely with training and procedures. That’s starting to change, as AI tools move into the operating room and pair with a fast-growing footprint of surgical robots.
Terry Bohlke, CEO of Nashville, Tenn.-based Keystone Surgical Partners, said he’s neither afraid of the technology nor ready to embrace it blindly.
“I know a lot of people are afraid of it, and I think that’s probably too far to go. I wouldn’t be afraid of it, but I also wouldn’t just blindly embrace it,” he said. “There are a lot of really good, smart people who are really investing a lot of time and effort to make sure that it’s secure, it’s smart, and the decision-making is always in the hands of the human.”
Beyond that caution, Mr. Bohlke said he sees real opportunity, though the people building AI tools generally don’t understand the ASC industry itself.
“AI just has amazing opportunities in the ASC. The more I get involved with this, the more I learn about what’s being done,” he said. “You’ve got amazingly smart people who do AI, and they are super intelligent and very creative, but they don’t really know anything about the ASC industry.”
That gap, he said, is where ASC operators come in — across both the business and clinical sides of a center.
“I see this partnership of ASC operators — the real operators in every aspect of the ASC, including billing and collections and administrative tasks and board meetings, and then the clinical operations in the OR and pre-op and [post-anesthesia care unit], and also the many times forgotten sterile processing department,” he said. “There’s all kinds of stuff that AI and technology can do in order to help track instrumentation and track sterilization.”
Mr. Bohlke said most AI tools today are still concentrated in revenue cycle management, but that’s changing quickly.
“Right now, it’s a lot in revenue cycle management because that’s low-hanging fruit. It’s in materials management, but it’s getting into the OR in dictation,” he said.
In GI, he pointed to tools already in use that flag potential abnormalities in real time during a procedure.
“The GI AI watches, follows along [with a procedure], and then if a potential abnormality is missed, it just beeps and says, ‘Hey, that looks kind of strange to me,’ and the GI doctor can go back a few inches and check that out,” he said.
Mr. Bohlke said that’s just the beginning, pointing to the growing presence of surgical robots inside ASCs, citing three centers he said were recently built with two robots each.
“It’s just inevitable that robotics will team up with AI,” he said. “Hopefully we don’t come to the point of AI doing the surgery, but there are a lot of ways that AI can help the surgeon as an AI assistant — to prod along and say, ‘Hey, did you miss this?, or do you want to do this?,’ and also to digitally record the procedure so that when they’re done with the case, the dictation’s done as well, and they can go start the next case. I definitely see that happening very soon.”
At the Becker’s 32nd Annual Meeting: The Business and Operations of ASCs, taking place October 29-31 in Chicago, ASC leaders, surgeons and healthcare executives will explore strategies to drive growth, enhance operational performance, navigate reimbursement challenges and prepare for the future of ambulatory surgery. Apply for complimentary registration now.
