AI 'nihilism' is a barrier to better health care, CMS lead says

"Our biggest - and your biggest - challenge is nihilism. Internal data collected from querying Medicare patients found that they still do not trust AI - a barrier to greater adoption and deployment of these tools, since no one has gotten to them with the use case of why it will transform their life for the better."

"Healthcare professionals need to embrace the reality that both in health and in medical, we need to reach the people who are using these tools and compel an idea to come up, which is, 'If we use this right, it will save lives, transform your ability to get access to care, allow us to manage a $1.8 trillion business, and we'll all be better off.'"

"Agentic AI systems are able to operate largely autonomously and can take steps to meet a specific goal, rather than just simply responding to user prompts for information. If you can buy a mortgage with agentic AI giving you advice, you should be able to use that same technology to help you pick your Medicare."

AI technology offers significant potential to improve healthcare delivery across rural and urban communities, but widespread adoption faces a critical obstacle: patient distrust. Medicare beneficiaries lack confidence in AI capabilities because healthcare professionals have not effectively communicated how these tools will directly benefit their lives. CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz emphasized that overcoming this "nihilism" requires healthcare professionals to actively engage patients with compelling use cases demonstrating how AI can save lives, improve care access, and optimize healthcare management. CMS is exploring deployment of agentic AI systems—autonomous tools capable of independent decision-making toward specific goals—for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, potentially by year's end, similar to AI applications in mortgage services.

Read at Nextgov.com