AI is no longer taking notes, it's taking charge. As hospitals race to harness agentic AI, the question isn't how fast technology can evolve, but how much control healthcare leaders are willing to give up.
AI has edged out of research labs and quietly walked into the hospital. Agentic AI systems—ones that don’t just support decisions but make them—are now functioning in clinical roles: diagnosing, recommending, even prescribing. For hospital leaders, that shift carries more than clinical risk—it threatens the very structure of care delivery, workforce models, and capital investments.
In our October cover story, senior technology editor Eric Wicklund forces open the key fault lines of this transformation:
- How systems are weighing efficiency gains against the erosion of clinician autonomy
- Whether AI-driven workflows will hollow out key professional roles or save the system from collapse under human burnout
- What governance failures or legal blind spots might emerge when machines take charge in the exam room
This isn’t an academic thought experiment. It’s a high-stakes revolution happening now. Don’t miss this one because in the next decade, the decisions in this story may determine who leads and who just follows.
Read the full story here.
Amanda Norris is the Director of Content for HealthLeaders.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Hospitals are letting agentic AI tools diagnose, prescribe, and even plan treatment steps, forcing leaders to ask where human judgment ends and algorithmic control begins.
Some say AI is finally easing burnout and decision fatigue; others fear it’s eroding the art, and autonomy, of medicine.
As AI grows more “empathetic,” executives are confronting an unsettling paradox: what happens when patients feel closer to their algorithms than their doctors?