One gives you back your time. The other fuels your practice’s growth.
By Hunter H. Kerrison, MHA Chief Strategy Officer, HealthLinks Marketing
You did not go to medical school to spend your afternoon wrestling with an EHR. You did not complete a residency to draft prior authorization letters, field after-hours administrative calls, or spend hours documenting earlier encounters. Yet, here we are.
Physicians are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to tackle these challenges, and those who deploy it wisely will differentiate themselves from those who simply survive. The question is no longer whether AI belongs in your practice. The question is which AI you are deploying, and whether you are deploying it where it actually works.
That distinction matters more than most vendors will tell you. AI is a powerful tool, but it is not a universal one. Used wisely, it protects your time and fuels your growth. Used carelessly, or in the wrong environments, it can cost you revenue, create compliance exposure, and deliver a dangerous false sense of security.
WHERE AI GENUINELY SHINES: GIVING YOU BACK THE EXAM ROOM
Ambient AI medical scribes may be the most physician-friendly technology to emerge in a generation, and frankly, the one that should be explored first. Tools like Nuance DAX, Suki, and others listen (with consent) to the clinical encounter and generate a structured, compliant note before you leave the room. No more staying late to finish documentation. No more sacrificing eye contact with a patient because you are typing at a screen.
AI excels here for a precise reason: the clinical encounter, while deeply human, follows recognizable patterns. Chief complaint, history, assessment, plan. The language of clinical documentation, while variable in content, has enough structural consistency that AI can learn it, organize it, and render it accurately. Physicians using ambient scribes report documentation time reductions of 30 to 70 percent. More meaningfully, they report feeling like physicians again.
The same logic applies to other structured clinical workflows: flagging abnormal lab values; applying clinical decision support protocols (sepsis screening, preventive care reminders, chronic disease management alerts); routing patient portal messages and refill requests; pre-visit chart summaries; and post-visit care gap identification. Wherever the inputs are structured and the outputs follow established logic, AI earns its place.
Regardless of which tool you use, the physician remains accountable for the outcome. An ambient scribe does not sign the note. You do. A decision support alert does not make the diagnosis. You do. AI surfaces and recommends; the physician validates and bears full professional and legal responsibility. No technology changes that.
WHERE AI FALLS SHORT: THE REVENUE CYCLE IS NOT THE PLACE TO FIND OUT
Revenue cycle management is one of the most aggressively marketed AI applications in healthcare today. The pitch is compelling: automate denials management, speed up authorization workflows, reduce staff overhead. It is understandably attractive. The reality, though, is considerably more complicated, and the downside risk is real.
AI is built on natural language processing: its ability to recognize patterns in language, predict likely outcomes based on prior data, and recommend next steps. That works beautifully when the inputs are uniform and the decision rules are stable. Revenue cycle management is neither.
Insurance companies do not make uniform decisions. A prior authorization that sailed through last quarter may be denied this quarter under a revised policy buried in a bulletin no one read. Documentation that satisfies one carrier’s medical necessity criteria may fall short of another’s for the identical diagnosis, procedure, and patient profile. Payer behavior is not only variable; it is often deliberately inconsistent.
Layered on top of that is the inherent variability of clinical language. Physicians do not document in standardized phrases. A hospitalist’s note reads differently than a proceduralist’s. A solo practitioner in Conway documents differently than a multi-specialty group in Columbia. When AI encounters this degree of language variability against an unpredictable payer backdrop, its pattern-matching breaks down. What fills the gap is often a missed denial appeal, an under-coded claim, or an authorization request that goes nowhere.
The revenue cycle is a relationship business and a judgment business. It requires people who understand payer behavior, know how to escalate, can read between the lines of a denial reason, and have the experience to know when to fight and when to recode. That is not a workflow to hand to an algorithm. Invest in experienced human revenue cycle professionals and hold them accountable to the numbers.
There is also a liability dimension worth naming directly. When a claim is miscoded because an algorithm misread a variable clinical note, when a denial goes uncontested because no human reviewed it: the physician’s name is on the record. Not the vendor’s. Yours. The tool does not absorb the liability. You do.
AI THAT GROWS YOUR PRACTICE: WHERE IT BELONGS IN THE BACK OFFICE AND BEYOND
On the operational side, AI performs well in scheduling optimization, patient recall and re-engagement communications, and practice performance dashboards that give administrators and physicians the kind of visibility once reserved for large health systems.
On the growth side, AI is reshaping how practices are found, evaluated, and chosen by patients. Search engine optimization (ensuring your practice appears when a patient searches for your services) is being fundamentally transformed by AI-powered tools that analyze search behavior, identify content gaps, monitor competitor positioning, and adapt to Google’s increasingly sophisticated algorithms in near real time. This is not optional anymore. Practices that are not actively managing their digital presence with AI-informed SEO strategies are losing ground daily to competitors who are.
This is why the marketing partner you trust should absolutely be leveraging AI: not to replace human strategy, but to execute more precisely in the areas where AI excels, including keyword and trend analysis, content optimization, local search management, online reputation monitoring, and campaign performance analytics. Human-led strategy sets the direction. AI-powered execution ensures you are visible when patients are searching.
WHAT YOU SHOULD BE INVESTING AND HOW IT SHOULD BE WORKING
Healthcare marketing consultants and practice management advisors broadly recommend a floor of four percent of annual revenue for growth and marketing, consistent with small-to-mid-size service business benchmarks established by the U.S. Small Business Administration. For many South Carolina practices, the number is lower than that, and it shows in stagnant patient volume, fading referral relationships, and outdated digital profiles. Four percent is not a ceiling; it is a floor. Competitive markets and growing practices often require six-to-eight percent.
Whatever the number, that investment must include AI-powered capabilities deployed strategically and in the right places. When you evaluate your marketing partnership, ask directly: how is your team using AI, and where are they keeping humans in the lead? Any agency worth trusting should answer both questions with specificity.
THE BOTTOM LINE
The practices pulling ahead right now are asking the right questions: Where does this genuinely help? How are we ensuring accountability for accuracy? Those questions lead to the same place every time. Invest in AI that supports the physician. Keep humans in charge of areas that are highly variable. And on the growth side, make sure your marketing team is using AI precisely, not generically.
Generic marketing does not move the needle. Through all of it, remember: the tool does not carry the liability. The credential does. That is not a limitation of the technology. That is the irreplaceable value of you.
Hunter H. Kerrison, MHA, is chief strategy officer of HealthLinks Marketing, a healthcare marketing firm serving clients across the Southeast. To learn more about how AI fits your practice, contact Hunter at hunter@healthlinksmarketing.com
