As payer complexity and administrative burdens intensify, ASCs are turning to AI as a way to protect margins and efficiency by using it to manage prior authorizations and appeals, optimize OR performance and explore new clinical applications.
For many ASCs, the efficiency boosts that AI provides have become necessary for survival, from coding changes, prior authorization and appeals.
“In the fast-paced world of ASCs, billing teams are constantly juggling coding changes, payer denials, prior authorizations and time-consuming appeals. Efficiency isn’t just nice to have — it’s survival,” Brooke Day, administrator at Hastings (Neb.) Surgical Center, said “That’s why ChatGPT has become one of the most useful tools we’ve brought into our workflow. It’s not just a novelty or a shortcut — it’s a real solution to one of our biggest time drains: payer communication.”
When you talk about areas where medicine can be advanced, AI is one of, if not the first, improvement that comes up across all specialties. One example is in anesthesia, where AI could personalize preoperative risk and support physicians in their decision making.
“AI-assisted systems will transform anesthesia by personalizing preoperative risk assessment and supporting intraoperative decision-making in real time,” said Rebecca Bernstein. CEO and Founder of Innovative Healthcare Advisors in Vancouver, Wash. “Trained on EHR and physiologic data, these tools could outperform traditional risk scores, anticipate complications like hypotension, and recommend timely interventions. The key will be ensuring data quality, intuitive interfaces and clear regulation. AI will not replace anesthesiologists but amplify their judgment where it matters most.”
The gastroenterology space is also ripe for AI integration, especially on the academic side of things, according to Benjamin Levy III, MD, a gastroenterologist at University of Chicago Medicine.
“From an academic perspective, the artificial intelligence technology is amazing because it really has the potential to help our first-year fellows in training get even more experience because they are seeing polyps for the first time,” Dr. Levy said. “Especially in that first year of training, it’s able to help fine tune what is a polyp versus a fold that just looks a little bit abnormal.”
While not every facility has integrated AI, nearly every single ASC is at least thinking about it and how AI can provide benefits. Kimel Park Surgery Center in Winston-Salem, N.C., is one of those ASCs that sees the potential value.
“Currently, we have not implemented AI robustly at our ASC,” Colby Marks, administrator at Kimel Park Surgery Center, told Becker’s. “We are beginning to have conversations with our physician partners to analyze the benefits of utilizing AI in our revenue cycle management and our clinical operations. We see value in AI enhancing our OR utilization, metric tracking and communication across business units. We understand collectively that AI will impact our industry in the coming years. As such, we must evaluate all options to continue providing high quality patient care.”
