House Bipartisan Task Force on AI releases healthcare report

Modern Healthcare – Wednesday, December 18, 2024
By Gabriel Perna

The House Bipartisan Task Force on Artificial Intelligence has issued a comprehensive report outlining policy recommendations for AI’s in healthcare.

AI development in healthcare has outpaced regulation of the technology, leaving the industry to create its own guidelines. Congressional leaders from both the Senate and House of Representatives have conducted hearings to learn how insurers and providers use AI, but they have not passed significant legislation to regulate it.

Related: Telehealth and doctors win, PBMs lose as government funding deal nears

A bipartisan group of 12 Republican and 12 Democratic lawmakers led by co-chairs Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) authored the report. The task force, formed in February, looked at AI in healthcare along with several other industries.

The report’s authors said AI can reduce administrative burden, speed drug development and improve clinical diagnosis. But they warned if AI is not used properly, it will reduce the quality of care, break down patient privacy protections, perpetuate biases and create unnecessary denials of care. The lawmakers also said payment mechanisms from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are not able to adequately reimburse usage of AI.

Authors went through several common use cases for AI in healthcare including reducing physician documentation through generative AI, assisting clinicians in diagnosing patients and identifying fraudulent billing practices. In all use cases, they said AI has the potential to improve the healthcare system or make it worse, depending on the quality of data used to train the algorithms.

The industry would benefit from voluntary standards for collecting and sharing data between clinical systems and algorithms, the report said. It also recommended the creation of guidelines that support the evaluation of AI, promote interoperability and data quality and help covered entities meet their legal requirements under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

The Coalition for Health AI, which formally launched as a nonprofit organization in March, could potentially create the guidelines suggested by House lawmakers. The industry group published a draft in October of its guidelines for providers, startups and other organizations to use AI responsibly. House lawmakers recommended the Health and Human Services Department work with the Commerce Department, which has developed general standards for AI risk management and evaluation, to create best practices.

The lawmakers said Congress should monitor legal liability for when AI models produce “incorrect diagnoses or make erroneous and harmful diagnostic recommendations.” While liability currently falls on the clinician, lawmakers say this could change as AI’s use in healthcare increases. The question over AI-related liability has been brought up by the American Medical Association.

In terms of reimbursement, the task force said Congress should ensure Medicare recognizes appropriate AI-related medical technologies. It also acknowledged that Medicare’s policies will likely not be able to reimburse all AI technologies in healthcare.

Access this article at its original source.