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Employers who like the idea of using artificial intelligence systems to hold down health plan claim costs might have public opinion on their side.
Zelis — a health care technology company that serves payers and providers — says it has new survey data showing that most U.S. consumers with health insurance who have heard of AI support using it in health insurance claim administration, and that support for use of AI in health coverage administration is even stronger than support of use of AI in effots to provide patient care.
About 84% or consumers polled said they had neutral or positive feelings about the use of AI in processing insurance claims, and only 8% said they were strongly opposed to using AI for that purpose, according to Zelis.
Zelis found even stronger consumer support for use of AI to schedule medical appoints: 92% of survey participants had neutral or more positive feelings about use of AI in appointment scheduling and only 5% said they strongly opposed use of AI for that purpose.
Consumers were cooler toward use of AI in the actual delivery of medicare care,
About 77% of the survey participants accepted use of AI tools to recommend treatments, and 10% said they were very uncomfortable about the idea of AI systems actually recommending care.
For the idea of AI systems diagnosing medical conditions, the share of participants expressing acceptance was 72% and the share expressing strong opposition was 15%.
What it means: If Zelis analysts and survey results are giving an accurate picture of public opinion, employers, insurers and plan administrators might be in a good position to argue that health plans should be able able to use AI-based administration systems to identify inaccurate or fraudulent claims, even if that makes doctors, hospitals and other care providers uncomfortable.
Survey details: Zelis based the new survey results summary on data collected by Datos Insights.
The sample included a total of 1,226 people who had either employer sponsored health coverage or individual health insurance.
The results are based on responses from 1,192 U.S. adults who said they were familiar with AI.
The question presented was, "Thinking now about how artificial intelligence (AI) could be used in healthcare, how do you feel about AI being used in the following aspects of health care?"
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