The American Hospital Association (AHA) sent a letter to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) urging it to streamline federal regulations regarding artificial intelligence in healthcare.
The official Request for Information (RFI) was dated Monday, Oct. 27, and signed by AHA Senior Vice President Public Policy Analysis and Development Ashley Thompson.
Addressed to OSTP Director Michael Kratsios, Thompson said in the letter that the AHA was reaching out on behalf of its “nearly 5,000 member hospitals, health systems and other health care organizations, our clinician partners — including more than 270,000 affiliated physicians, 2 million nurses and other caregivers — and the 43,000 health care leaders who belong to our professional membership groups.”
The OSTP, established in 1976, gives the President and Executive Office of the President (EOP) advice on the scientific, engineering, and technological aspects of national policy. This includes matters of the economy, national security, homeland security, health, foreign relations, the environment, education, and resource management, according to its website.
Redundant Rules Cost Money
Excessive and obsolete legislation hikes the cost of administrative overhead in hospitals and health systems, Thompson said. More than $1 trillion every year — about 25% of all U.S. healthcare spending — goes toward administrative tasks, according to the AHA. Close to 40% of hospitals function at negative margins.
“Within the health care ecosystem, excessive regulatory and administrative burdens have added unnecessary cost and reduced patient access to care,” per the letter.
The AHA has already provided recommendations to numerous federal agencies on ways to reduce the regulatory burden on hospitals and health systems. They’ve been in touch with:
- Office of Management and Budget
- Department of Health and Human Services
- Federal Trade Commission
- Department of Justice
“Given AI’s potential to drive efficiencies and enhance the quality of care, our members have urged that policy frameworks strike the appropriate balance of flexibility to enable innovation while ensuring patient safety.”
Potential of AI To Support Workforce
The AHA offers four categories of recommendations to maximize the potential for AI to improve care, accelerate innovation, and support the health care workforce:
- Address organizational and infrastructural factors. Appropriate incentives and infrastructure investment are necessary to expand AI in health care. These are necessary for both provider readiness and patient adoption.
- Synchronize and leverage existing policy frameworks to avoid redundancy. While AI policies should be elastic to keep pace with the rapid pace of innovation, they should also be synchronized and integrated within certain existing health care policy frameworks to minimize redundancies.
- Remove regulatory barriers. Certain statutes and regulations in the health care ecosystem, such as the patchwork of state privacy laws and 42 CFR part 2, have indirectly impacted hospitals and health systems’ ability to develop and deploy certain AI tools. We provide recommendations on ways to reduce regulatory barriers that inhibit the development and deployment of AI tools.
- Ensure the safe and effective use of AI. AI policies must also ensure privacy and safety. The AHA recommends policies that ensure clinicians are included in the decision loop for algorithms that may impact access to care or care delivery, policies that provide consistency in privacy and security standards for third-party vendors and policies that offer post-deployment standards for health care AI to ensure ongoing integrity of tools.
Benefits of Steamlining Policies
AHA leaders said aligning and simplifying AI policies could help reduce costs, strengthen cybersecurity, and allow hospitals to safely expand the use of AI in patient care. The organization said it believes that AI policy should not be considered in a vacuum, as it intersects with a wide range of other policy issues with regulatory frameworks of their own.
These include, but are not limited to:
- Data Privacy: HIPAA provides baseline federal standards for the protection of personal health information. HIPAA covers a wide range of health information technology applications, including AI.
- Cybersecurity: The National Institute of Standards and Technology cybersecurity framework and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) cybersecurity performance goals (CPGs) provide reliable voluntary standards frameworks for cybersecurity.
- Premarket Testing: The Food and Drug Administration regulations for Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) require testing of the safety and efficacy of AI-enabled medical devices through a premarket submission program.
- Transparency: The Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy under HHS requires certified health IT to meet certain transparency requirements for AI.
- Anti-bias and Discrimination: Any entity receiving federal financial assistance, including all health care providers and insurers, is prohibited from using AI tools and algorithms that discriminate through the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) Anti-Bias and Discrimination regulations.
- Access to Care: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Medicare Advantage regulations specify that AI cannot “act alone” to terminate or deny services. These regulations also establish that the health plan is responsible for ensuring the tool is accurate and free from bias.
The letter said that with such a wide range of policy issues, “developing separate AI frameworks could inadvertently add redundancy and inefficiency. For this reason, we encourage agencies to synchronize policies with these existing regulatory frameworks.”
American Academy of Physician Associates
A new white paper calls on federal and state policymakers to modernize outdated laws, regulations, and payment systems in order to harness the full potential of AI in care delivery.
“Aging Well with AI: Transforming Care Delivery,” the report was commissioned by HealthFORCE, in collaboration with the American Academy of Physician Associates (AAPA) and West Health, and developed by The LINUS Group. It is the second in a two-part series examining how AI can support care teams, expand access, and ease the growing strain on America’s healthcare system.
“America’s healthcare system is not built for the future. We can’t just innovate around broken infrastructure — we need to modernize it,” said Lisa M. Gables, CEO of AAPA and founder of HealthFORCE. “This paper makes clear that AI alone won’t fix workforce shortages, but with policy reform, it can dramatically ease the burden and bring care to more people.”
The paper proposes a Risk/Impact Matrix to guide adoption and policy prioritization. Use cases that rank low risk, and high impact should be accelerated first, including:
- Ambient AI Scribes: Freeing clinicians from redundant charting to focus more on patients.
- AI-Supported Care Coordination: Reducing duplicative tests and missed referrals through smart triage and automated workflows.
- On-Demand Clinical Training: Empowering providers to stay current with AI-enhanced continuing education tailored to evolving roles.