AI has become the center of many conversations among healthcare professionals looking to cut out inefficiencies and lessen administrative burdens for their practitioners.
Here are three ways that leaders are putting AI to work in ASCs:
1. Administrative and communication tasks: “Organizationally, we are the front end of broad AI implementations that really focus first on enhancing large volume administrative and clerical tasks,” Les Jebson, administrator of Prisma Health’s Orthopedics & Sports Medicine Institute in Columbia, S.C., told Becker’s. “Streamlining pre-certifications, prior-authorizations, timely patient and family member communications, linear appointment case scheduling.”
Cutting out administrative and clerical burdens for physicians and staff can be make-or-break for ASCs, many of whom operate independently and are more sensitive to the negative financial consequences of inefficiencies.
“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, told Becker’s. “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.”
2. Turning data into real-time insights. Data analytics is one of the fastest-growing applications of AI in the ASC setting. Advanced analytic tools powered by machine learning are helping administrators transform raw operational data — like turnover times, case volumes and staffing trends — into real-time, actionable insights.
Tara Good-Young, CEO of PDI Surgery Center in Windsor, Calif., told Becker’s that refined AI analytics are improving both speed and clarity.
“Advanced data gathering and analytics utilizing refined AI will give facilities and providers more granular, meaningful insight from operational and functional data, faster,” she said, noting that these tools allow reports and performance reviews to occur “closer to real time,” reducing delays between identifying and solving issues.
3. Disease detection and surgical precision. While the use of AI in surgical robotic technologies and other diagnostic tools is still far from ubiquitous, many specialists — including orthopedic surgeons and gastroenterologists — have already implemented it into their clinical practice.
“Artificial intelligence has become part of our practice. We’ve deployed an AI visual interface during colonoscopy, which can help detect precancerous lesions. Coming soon, we’ll use AI dictation for clinic visits and hope to use AI to scour our incoming queue to flag ‘high-risk’ referrals to bring them to the top of the list for scheduling purposes,” Omar Khokhar, MD, gastroenterologist and partner at Illinois Gastro Health in Bloomington told Becker’s.
