You’re reading Part 4 of Paying for AI, a series examining how new clinical artificial intelligence tools influence the affordability of health care and patients’ long-term health. Here’s Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
For hospitals, the promise of artificial intelligence is financial as much as clinical. A hospital might deploy an AI device because it promises to throw up an alert that could save a patient’s life — but the technology is far more likely to stick if it proves it can drive down costs.
Convincing hospitals and health systems that a new technology will provide that return on investment is tricky, though. So some AI startups have benefited from a temporary sweetener that helps customers get on board: Certain new technologies can apply to get add-on payments from Medicare for two or three years after they come to market. The tax-dollar-funded payments are meant as an incentive to help get new, expensive medical technologies to patients.
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