Gastroenterology groups are selling AI as their growth engine, from recruiting and colonoscopy detection to pitching skeptical millennial hires, but a Johns Hopkins study found physicians actually view AI-heavy-using colleagues as less competent, a “competence penalty” that cuts against the industry’s own sales pitch.
“AI is already unmistakably part of medicine,” Tinglong Dai, professor of business at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and co-corresponding author of the study, said in a release. “What surprised us is that doctors who use it in making medical decisions can be perceived by their peers as less capable. That kind of stigma, not the technology itself, may be an obstacle to better care.”
The study found peer perception takes a hit for physicians who use AI. Framing generative AI as a “second opinion” or verification step softened the negative perception somewhat, but didn’t erase it. Physicians who skipped GenAI altogether earned the most favorable peer views.
Clinically, the enthusiasm often has limits. Benjamin Levy III, MD, of University of Chicago Medicine, told Becker’s he expects computer-aided detection to get better at catching small, flat or hard-to-see polyps, and hopes ambient AI will keep speeding up procedure documentation.
Louise McCarthy, RN, of Clearwater Endoscopy Center, however, cautioned that cost and integration hurdles mean independent ASCs face “strategic adoption rather than broad implementation” rather than a wholesale AI overhaul.
Other GI leaders are watching a different threat entirely. Gurneet Bedi, MD, of GastroFlorida, said the bigger disruption may come from how AI intersects with private equity and hospital consolidation, reshaping physician autonomy well beyond the scope itself.
The contradiction shows up inside the practices leaning hardest into AI.
“AI-driven service line redesign has been major,” Geogy Vennikandam, MD, COO of Chicago-based GI Partners of Illinois, told Becker’s, crediting it with reducing administrative FTE growth, shortening cycles and improving yield “without increasing overhead.”
The group has gone further than most, naming its AI tools by brand — pill cams, virtual call centers led by an AI agent, ambient dictation — and using them as a recruiting hook.
“Younger physicians love forward-thinking organizations,” Dr. Vennikandam said, describing med students who light up when practices aren’t “stuck in the era of Excel spreadsheets.”
Layer patient-facing AI on top, and the trust question gets more complicated. A Physician’s Foundation survey found 61% of physicians have had patients influenced by medical misinformation over the past year, and 40% aren’t confident their patients know how to find reliable health information online, even as tools like ChatGPT Health push further into consumer hands.
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