CEO of America's Largest Public Hospital System Says He's Ready To Replace Radiologists With AI

Mitchell H. Katz, MD, president and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals, said hospitals could already replace many radiologists with AI for some imaging tasks -- if regulators allowed it. He argued the technology presents an opportunity to simultaneously cut costs and expand access. Radiology Business reports: Katz -- who has led the 11-hospital organization since 2018 -- said he sees great potential for AI to increase access to breast cancer screening. Hospitals could potentially produce "major savings" by letting the technology handle first reads, with radiologists then double-checking any abnormal screenings. Fellow panelist David Lubarsky, MD, MBA, president and CEO of the Westchester Medical Center Health Network, said his system is already seeing great success in deploying such technology. The AI Westchester uses misses very few breast cancers and is "actually better than human beings," he told the audience. "For women who aren't considered high risk, if the test comes back negative, it's wrong only about 3 times out of 10,000," Lubarsky said. Katz asked fellow hospital CEOs if there is any reason why they shouldn't be pushing for changes to New York state regulations, allowing AI to read images "without a radiologist," Crain's reported. In this scenario, rads could then provide second opinions, if AI flags any images as abnormal. Sandra Scott, MD, CEO of the One Brooklyn Health, a small hospital facing tight margins, agreed with this line of thinking, according to Crain's. "I mean, I'm in charge of a safety-net institution. It would be a game-changer," Scott said about AI being used to replace rads.