Doctors Use A.I. Chatbots to Help Fight Insurance Denials

In The New York Times, Teddy Rosenbluth reports on doctors using AI tools to automate their fight with insurance companies’ (automated) efforts to refuse or delay payment:

Doctors and their staff spend an average of 12 hours a week submitting prior-authorization requests, a process widely considered burdensome and detrimental to patient health among physicians surveyed by the American Medical Association.

With the help of ChatGPT, Dr. Tward now types in a couple of sentences, describing the purpose of the letter and the types of scientific studies he wants referenced, and a draft is produced in seconds.

Then, he can tell the chatbot to make it four times longer. “If you’re going to put all kinds of barriers up for my patients, then when I fire back, I’m going to make it very time consuming,” he said.

I admire the dash of spite in this effort! But is this an example of tech leveling the playing field, or part of an AI-weaponized red-tape arms race that no one can win?