Facility leaders want fewer AI tools, not more, but ASC leaders say one platform that does everything doesn’t exist yet.
The question came from an audience member who runs multiple facilities, at an Oct. 29 session at Becker’s 32nd Annual Business and Operations of ASCs in Chicago. He said every health system and surgery center he works with has its own AI built in, and he would rather have one EHR with all the AI he needs.
“There is no one system,” said Bipan Chand, MD, chair of surgery at Ascension Saint Joseph-Chicago. His organization runs more than nine EHRs.
He said leaders should start with the problems they need solved and look for tools that work with any EHR. Building the same tool across systems isn’t simple, he said.
“Being able to communicate with Epic is not the same as communicating with Cerner or Meditech,” he said.
Tools that don’t connect can backfire.
“Having them all independent, it doesn’t make the workload much easier,” Dr. Chand said. “Sometimes it actually creates increased workload.”
Health system leaders have described the same problem.
“The bottleneck is honestly us, our ability as a health system to triage and prioritize all the options available to us,” Keith Morse, MD, chief medical informatics officer of Stanford Medicine Children’s Health in Palo Alto, Calif., told Becker’s in May.
Many ASCs are still at an earlier stage. About 76% of ASCs used an EHR in 2025, up from 55% in 2021, according to an Ambulatory Surgery Center Association survey. Roughly 1 in 4 still keep paper records.
Geogy Vennikandam, CEO of GI Partners of Illinois, compared EHR vendors to Apple, which keeps users inside its own ecosystem. He said EHR vendors are building their own AI tools and “don’t always get along” with outside ones.
The largest vendors are moving fast. Epic released AI Charting, which drafts notes and suggested orders in real time, and Oracle Health expanded its Clinical AI Agent to automate order creation during appointments.
Federal rules are meant to keep data moving between systems. Under the 21st Century Cures Act, health IT developers that engage in information blocking face penalties of up to $1 million per violation. Since July 2024, hospitals, clinicians and ACO participants have faced disincentives such as reduced Medicare payments. HHS has started issuing notices of nonconformity, and more than 2,000 complaints were under federal review as of June. The HTI-5 rule HHS finalized Oct. 26 put off proposed changes to information-blocking policy. It also eliminated requirements that certified health IT disclose details on AI and predictive decision-support tools.
Janine Pizzimenti, ASC business segment leader and director of product strategy at Athenahealth, said every vendor is investing in AI.
“We’re going to continue to release functionality that’s going to do some of the things that these third-party bolt-ons are doing today,” she said. “That said, we also know we’re not going to be able to do everything.”
She said built-in features can deliver savings at no added cost. AI that reads an insurance card and fills in the right plan saves front-desk time, which leads to fewer denials and less billing rework.
Athenahealth launched athenaOne for ASCs Oct. 22. The platform runs physician practices and their affiliated surgery centers on one system with a shared patient record, linked scheduling and consolidated billing.
More vendors also means more security risk. Dr. Chand said his organization took about 18 months to vet AI tools, and a council reviews every one. Vendors that miss the RFP’s encryption and data-protection criteria are cut.
An audience member added that cyber insurance is harder to get with many third parties connected to a system.
Vendor risk is well documented. Of healthcare organizations rated by Moody’s that suffered a cyber incident since 2020, 59% were reached through a third-party vendor, compared with 40% across all sectors. Only 43% of nonprofit hospitals review vendors’ cybersecurity practices at least once a year.
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.
