Balancing Innovation and Ethics: The Role of Agentic AI in the Payer Landscape
Apr 8, 2025
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Neetu Rajpal, CEO and co-founder of Lilac Software, discusses the transformative impact of agentic AI in healthcare payers. She reveals how AI can streamline claim processing and close care gaps, especially in crucial areas like breast cancer screenings. Neetu emphasizes the importance of ethics, addressing bias in AI training, and ensuring patient-centered design. The conversation also dives into the balance between innovation and trust in healthcare technology, highlighting the need for regulatory compliance as we navigate this evolving landscape.
Agentic AI streamlines claims grievances and enhances care delivery, allowing healthcare payers to allocate human resources more effectively.
Ethics and patient-centered design are crucial in AI implementation, ensuring bias reduction and addressing the needs of vulnerable populations.
Deep dives
The Role of Agentic AI in Healthcare
Agentic AI represents a significant advancement in artificial intelligence, with the capability to not only understand and analyze data but also to take autonomous actions based on that data. This technology mimics human-like reasoning and can streamline processes such as claims grievances by gathering and analyzing all necessary information without human intervention. For instance, when a member files a grievance regarding a denied claim, agentic AI can efficiently cross-reference relevant details and generate a tailored response, significantly speeding up the resolution process. This capability allows organizations to allocate human resources more effectively by having agents handle more complex cases, while simpler tasks are managed by AI systems.
Leveraging AI for Quality Improvement
Healthcare payers can leverage AI to enhance service delivery and address gaps in care effectively, particularly through programs like STARS and HEDIS. For instance, AI can identify members overdue for critical services such as breast cancer screenings and automate outreach efforts, thereby improving compliance and health outcomes. This shifts the traditional manual processes, where staff members would manually call patients, allowing for a more personalized and efficient approach to healthcare delivery. By scaling these AI solutions, organizations can ensure that every member receives the necessary support, effectively addressing care gaps without being limited by human resource constraints.
Ensuring Ethical AI Practices
As AI technologies evolve in healthcare, it is crucial to ensure that these systems are unbiased and ethical, particularly when serving vulnerable populations like those in Medicare programs. Monitoring the training data for bias and deploying multiple AI models can help mitigate potential disparities in care. Furthermore, organizations are encouraged to keep the patient at the center of AI implementation, ensuring that technology addresses real-world needs effectively. It is also vital to recognize the importance of balancing automation with human oversight, aiming for high accuracy and reliability rather than striving for complete automation right away.
In this episode of the Becker's Healthcare Podcast, Erika Spicer Mason speaks with Neetu Rajpal, CEO of Lilac Software, about the evolving role of AI—specifically agentic AI—in the healthcare payer space. Neetu shares how this emerging technology is being applied to streamline claims grievances, close care gaps, and support Medicare Advantage programs, all while emphasizing the importance of ethics, patient-centered design, and regulatory compliance.