US Medicare AI pilot was launched hastily, care was delayed — STAT News
In the United States, a Medicare pilot program in which artificial intelligence is used for prior authorization of medical care was launched hastily and with errors; in some cases, this delayed the provision of care. STAT News reports, citing more than a thousand pages of recently released documents and data.
The WISeR program
The experiment is called Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction, or WISeR. It was launched in January. The program requires healthcare providers to obtain prior approval before providing certain procedures or items, including skin substitutes and epidural injections for pain relief.
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The pilot operates in the states of New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona and Washington. It is planned to run until 2031.
Vendor warning
The documents were obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. According to them, one of the WISeR vendors warned the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that it was unrealistic to expect a product ready for operation by the program launch planned by the federal agency.
