Provider orgs face major AI misalignment: Accenture – Fierce Healthcare

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In a new report from Accenture about scaling the benefits of generative AI in provider organizations, the consulting firm identified massive gaps in C-suite alignment on AI strategy. 

When Accenture surveyed C-suite level executives, it found significant gaps in the willingness to invest in the technology needed to accommodate gen AI and core business strategies for rolling out gen AI across their organizations. 

Along with identifying misalignment in provider organizations, Accenture pushes healthcare organizations to act more decisively on AI. 

The report prods provider organizations to move past the piloting phase that, according to its report, over 80% of organizations are engaged in. Pilots of AI solutions do not reap the substantial rewards of scaling AI technologies across the enterprise, Accenture argues. 

“Staying in pilot mode comes at a cost, as limited-scale trials prevent providers from achieving significant productivity gains and streamlined workflows,” the report says.

Accenture identified a gap in provider organizations’ investments and perceived goals for AI versus its commitment to laying the groundwork for the technology to thrive. Only 10% of organizations said they are investing in the organization’s digital infrastructure, which Accenture identifies as a top priority for organizations to gain the most from gen AI.

The consulting firm surveyed 300 C-suite level executives from provider organizations with at least $1 billion in revenue. 

1. Accenture identified a massive gap in technology investment and implementation 

Sixty percent of healthcare executives surveyed said they expect to see financial returns on AI within the first year of its deployment. But Accenture contends healthcare organizations aren’t investing enough in the technology to see sustained returns.

“Eighty-three percent of healthcare executives are piloting gen AI in pre-production environments, but fewer than 10% are investing in the infrastructure necessary to support enterprise-wide deployment,” the report authors said.

For example, 95% of executives said gen AI will only make a moderate impact over the next five years because their organizations lack the technological infrastructure. 

The field is similar for cybersecurity, Accenture found. Executives overwhelmingly said that cybersecurity is a major barrier to scaling gen AI. Not only are executives not investing in a secure and modern digital infrastructure, only 10% of executives identified underlying technological constraints as an issue for cybersecurity.

Deploying responsible AI is another of Accenture’s recommendations for healthcare companies, but it can prove to be slippery in its implementation. 

“Leaders acknowledge the importance of responsible AI principles, but there is a gap in their practical implementation—our research shows that only 2% of companies have fully operationalized responsible AI across their organizations,” Arnab Chakraborty, Accenture chief responsible AI officer, wrote in the report.

Accenture identifies the challenge of creating systems to monitor AI performance and increasing security vulnerabilities. “Critical concerns include data and intellectual property theft, malicious content creation, targeted high-speed contextual attacks, misuse of gen AI technologies, large-scale misinformation, copyright infringement, plagiarism and amplification of existing biases and discrimination,” the report says.

However, the ability to monitor and respond to issues with gen AI is core to scaling the technology across an enterprise. 

2. The C-suite is not aligned on how it should be sourcing expertise for gen AI

One of Accenture’s chief recommendations in the report is for provider organizations to partner with diverse technology partners to leverage and scale gen AI across their organizations. Doing so can help maximize gen AI’s impact on efficiency and revenue, Accenture writes.

Few C-suite executives identified outside partnerships as core to their gen AI strategies.

Healthcare executives most heavily leaned toward hiring additional AI experts to roll out gen AI at their organizations. Nearly half of CEOs said they would rely on an external technology partner to implement AI, but the rest of the C-suite put the odds at 10% or less. 

While 60% of CEOs said they expect to hire additional expertise, the rest of the C-suite leaned much more heavily in that direction, ranging from 78% to 94% of executives like chief financial officers, chief information officers, chief operating officers, chief strategy officers and chief technology officers.

Only 10% of the non-CEO executives said they might rely on external technology partners. 

Strategic collaborations with technology leaders, academic institutions and service providers offer essential expertise, support and the agility to stay at the forefront of gen AI advancements, the report said.

3. Set a vision for reinventing roles with AI

The report also focuses on using gen AI to relieve the provider shortage crisis the industry is facing and that is expected to worsen in the coming years. A large part of this effort should be redefining job roles and responsibilities to see what gen AI could take off the plates of providers and staff. 

“About 40% of the healthcare industry’s total working hours are devoted to language-based tasks that can be transformed by gen AI: 17% can be fully automated while 23% can be augmented, enhancing the efficiency of human efforts,” Accenture wrote, citing a previous report.

Accenture recommends tapping clinical leaders such as chief nurse officers and chief medical officers to play an outsized role in implementing AI because they better understand the tasks of the staff and how to simplify their jobs. 

Moreover, CEOs and other C-suite executives are misaligned on who in the company is best positioned to redefine job roles and responsibilities impacted by AI.

Twenty-eight percent of CEOs responded that redefining roles was their job, which only 5% of other executives agreed with. The vast majority of respondents, 80%, said chief digital officers or chief digital and artificial intelligence officers could best lead the effort. 

Accenture recommends that provider organizations strengthen their underlying technological capabilities to handle advanced digital platforms, data sharing and gen AI. Organizations should implement a cloud-first digital foundation, enhance data quality and build robust data governance frameworks, Accenture says. 

To get the most value out of gen AI, Accenture recommends that healthcare organizations move away from a strategy of doing limited pilots of AI for specific use cases. Healthcare’s overreliance on this cautious form of procurement threatens to stunt the industry’s benefit from the technology, the report authors say. 

Provider organizations should prioritize AI solutions that can operate across large swaths of the business and value chain to start seeing good return on investment.