Mass General Brigham tries an artificial intelligence solution with his primary care. WBUR’s Martha Bebinger says some patients are happy while doctors say it’s a Band-Aid.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Have you recently tried to find a new primary care doctor? About a hundred million Americans don’t have one. In Massachusetts, a woman called 10 doctors. None were accepting new patients. Some might see her in two years. Then the woman discovered an AI-based option. Reporter Martha Bebinger of member station WBUR goes from there.
MARTHA BEBINGER, BYLINE: The woman, Tammy MacDonald, has high blood pressure and recently had a breast cancer scare. She was therefore in close contact with her attending physician until his sudden death this summer. MacDonald quickly went from sadness to shock.
TAMMY MACDONALD: We live in Boston and we’re supposed to have excellent medical care, and I couldn’t understand that we just didn’t have doctors.
BEBINGER: MacDonald became anxious about refilling her prescriptions. She reviewed a letter from her Mass General Brigham health care network and noticed the link to an AI-enhanced telehealth alternative called Care Connect. MacDonald downloaded an app, spent about 10 minutes talking to the AI agent about what she needed, and scheduled a virtual visit with a real doctor.
MACDONALD: I think I had an appointment the next day or two days later. It was so different from being told I had to wait two years.
BEBINGER: MacDonald has used Care Connect four times since its launch in September. Sometimes MacDonald only interacts with the chatbot or AI agent. Her virtual visits all took place with the same doctor, one of 12 staff members at Mass General Brigham Care Connect. MacDonald still wants a primary care provider she can see in person. For now, she is relieved and appreciates that Care Connect has a doctor on call 24/7.
MACDONALD: It’s a logical short-term solution, but ultimately it’s the patient who feels the consequences of all the bigger things that happen in health care.
BEBINGER: Primary care doctors like Michael Barnett deal with these larger issues that are happening in health care. He describes rushed, complex patient visits, then evenings spent updating medical records and responding to patient messages. Primary care physicians earn on average 30 to 40 percent less than specialists, such as cardiologists or anesthesiologists. Barnett, who is also a physician at Mass General Brigham, says spending money to create a cheaper, AI-enhanced virtual system will erode morale and cause more doctors to quit.
MICHAEL BARNETT: It actually undermines our ability to have a primary care system that can serve more patients, which is what we need. But instead, we use it to fill a gap. This seems to me like a band-aid for a broken system.
BEBINGER: Care Connect isn’t just a Band-Aid, says Dr. Helen Ireland. She is a primary care physician and manages the program at Mass General Brigham. Hospitals need to find new ways, she says, to provide primary care to patients.
HELEN IRELAND: This is part of the puzzle of how to help address the current crisis and actually serve patients who want virtual care.
BEBINGER: Care Connect is also available through five other hospital networks across the country. Dr. Steven Lin, who founded Stanford Healthcare’s applied AI research team, says his role is limited.
STEVEN LIN: In its current state, the safest use of this tool is for more urgent healthcare issues: your upper respiratory infections, your urinary tract infections, your musculoskeletal injuries, your skin rashes.
BEBINGER: Lin, who is also chief of primary care at Stanford University School of Medicine, says patients with multiple chronic illnesses, like high blood pressure and diabetes, benefit from seeing a regular doctor that they see in person. K Health, the company that helped create Care Connect, counters that it’s not just to meet urgent needs that patients with more complex conditions receive safe and effective care. And Lin agrees, to a point.
LIN: I would rather these patients receive care, if that care can be safe, than not receive care at all.
BEBINGER: More patients will soon have the choice of whether or not to try Care Connect. Mass General Brigham will expand it to all residents of Massachusetts and New Hampshire in February.
For NPR News, I’m Martha Bebinger in Boston.
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