Turn on cookies to sign in
Signing in saves your progress to your Curie account. We can only do that with cookies on — turn them on to continue.
Patients are more open to AI in healthcare than providers think — and that gap is an opportunity. At the American College of Lifestyle Medicine's annual meeting, Dr. David Donohue urged clinicians to move beyond AI-assisted scribing and use the technology to analyze practice data, close care gaps, and support patients between visits. New Medicare payment codes in 2026–2027 could help fund this AI-enabled, team-based care model.
Patients are more comfortable with AI in clinical care than their providers realize — and that disconnect represents a missed opportunity. A West Health-Gallup survey of 5,330 respondents found that 38%–56% of patients are comfortable with AI use when a provider is involved, while nearly 90% of providers have already used an AI tool or chatbot for work tasks in the past year — yet only 20% received any formal training on it.
At the American College of Lifestyle Medicine's annual meeting, Dr. David Donohue, CMO at Progressive Health of Delaware, pushed clinicians to go beyond basic AI uses like ambient scribing and clinical searching. He described connecting a HIPAA-compliant AI assistant to his practice's EHR, which revealed they were delivering only 13.6% of billable preventive care — and later uncovered ~$482,000 in uncollected billing claims.
By the Numbers
Why it matters: As AI tools become embedded in clinical workflows, lifestyle medicine offers a compelling use case — from closing care gaps to supporting behavior change between visits. New Medicare payment structures in 2026–2027 could make AI-enabled, team-based preventive care financially sustainable for more practices.
