Blue Cross: hospitals' SI tools added almost $1 billion in costs for insurers over two years — more diagnoses, no more treatment
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Publication time restored from the build log. . Updated: .
SI works just as diligently for whoever bought it, and now hospitals and insurers are competing with algorithms over every dollar.
According to a Blue Cross Blue Shield Association study, SI scribes and systems that search patient records for "missed" comorbidities made cases look more complex on paper: additional diagnoses brought $653 million in excess costs, and more intensive coding overall brought $942 million compared with 2023. Among patients after bowel surgery, the diagnosis of partial obstruction became 55% more common. "If patients are truly more complex, we would see more treatment," the association says; hospitals counter that patients really have become sicker.
Sources 1