NOTE: This post is an excerpt of our ebook The agentic AI workforce is coming to healthcare. Click here to access the full publication.

AI will never fully replace healthcare workers. But it will change how a human healthcare workforce is structured and what people actually do at work.

This is a good thing for healthcare specifically – with agentic communications, we have a real opportunity to help patients (the reason most people enter the field in the first place) while improving the job satisfaction of healthcare workers who are reporting record levels of burnout.  

But getting to this point may require a rethink for executives across the landscape. While today many think of AI as a tool to help get work done faster or cheaper, that’s too limited a view. It’s instead worth thinking about AI as a way to take on all the work that isn’t getting done because there simply aren’t enough workers to do it. An example: A busy parent receives a diagnosis, but doesn’t have time to think through the news until after his kids are asleep … which is also when physicians offices and patient support lines are closed for the night.

Healthcare organizations that aren’t able to appropriately engage patients like this busy parent because they don’t have enough staff to do so. But they aren’t just providing subpar patient care; they are leaving revenue on the table.   

Another example: We know from multiple studies that phone calls from nurses or patient advocates to patients increase adherence. But we also know that phone calls from nurses and patient advocates don’t scale. AI agents, on the other hand, do scale – allowing staffing levels to move up and down based on need. If the peak two hours of a day require twice the number of call center agents, a healthcare organization could make up that gap with voice AI agents. And AI agents that call patients, perhaps to answer questions about a diagnosis or prescription, can help tackle the adherence challenges that lead to 125,000 possibly preventable deaths every year.

The AI agent workforce is turning the way we think of technology today on its head. By guiding patients through their care journeys, agentic communication solutions can help boost both access and adherence, while at the same time helping healthcare providers avoid lost revenue. But they also have intangible benefits: How much more engaged, productive, and fulfilled could a healthcare worker be with an AI agent assisting them? How much more informed, confident, and in control could a chronically ill patient feel, if they had access to a personalized AI agent? 

In healthcare, the agentic AI workforce is turning software directly into what we’ve traditionally thought of as labor; those in a prime position to reap the benefits of the AI agent workforce will think about AI as a way to get service through software.

To understand more about what the AI workforce of the future will look like, read The agentic AI workforce is coming to healthcare.