NEW YORK, June 27 (Xinhua) -- The medical industry, one of the top services prized in the United States, is caught between technical bliss and policy predicament as emerging artificial intelligence (AI) is liberating more doctors from chore and labor, and contracted migrant support is driving hospitals and senior centers to close doors over shortage of foreign nurses.
AI BOOST
"ChatGPT-style artificial intelligence is coming to health care, and the grand vision of what it could bring is inspiring. Every doctor, enthusiasts predict, will have a superintelligent sidekick, dispensing suggestions to improve care," said The New York Times on Monday in its report titled "AI May Someday Work Medical Miracles. For Now, It Helps Do Paperwork."
First will come more mundane applications of artificial intelligence. A prime target will be to ease the crushing burden of digital paperwork that physicians must produce, typing lengthy notes into electronic medical records required for treatment, billing and administrative purposes, according to the report.
"For now, the new AI in health care is going to be less a genius partner than a tireless scribe," it noted, emphasizing that "medicine is not a wide open terrain of experimentation. AI's tendency to occasionally create fabrications, or so-called hallucinations, can be amusing, but not in the high-stakes realm of health care."
That makes generative AI very different from AI algorithms, already approved by the Food and Drug Administration, for specific applications, like scanning medical images for cell clusters or subtle patterns that suggest the presence of lung or breast cancer, it said.
"Physicians and medical researchers say regulatory uncertainty, and concerns about patient safety and litigation, will slow the acceptance of generative AI in health care, especially its use in diagnosis and treatment plans," it added.
NURSE SHORTAGE
"Foreign nurses can't get green cards to work in the U.S., alarming hospitals, nursing homes and other medical providers who have relied on them to help alleviate staffing shortages," reported The Wall Street Journal on Monday in its report titled "Green-Card Backlog Fuels Shortage of Nurses at Hospitals, Nursing Homes."
Some nursing-home associations say facilities already operating on thin margins could be forced to close or be unable to accept seniors transitioning to care following hospitalizations. Hospitals say the shortage triggered by the backlog could undermine patient care, according to the report.
"Foreign nurses are important to the medical industry," noted the report. Hospitals, nursing homes and home health-aide companies were contending with a severe staffing crisis even before the COVID-19 pandemic, when companies often supplemented full-time domestic nursing hires with traveling nurses and a small pool of international recruits, typically from the Philippines or Jamaica. After the pandemic, those hires became even more crucial.
The pandemic strained health systems and led to about 100,000 registered nurses leaving the workforce during the past two years due to retirements, stress and burnout, according to a study released in April by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing. More than 600,000 additional nurses reported that they intended to leave by 2027, it said.
"Recruiting nurses from abroad has come to a halt because the type of green card that healthcare institutions use to hire nurses has become so oversubscribed that the State Department this month stopped processing applications from anyone who applied after February 2022," it added. ■