Agentic AI is a type of artificial intelligence that can act autonomously and can perform and learn from a sequence of tasks ordered by a human or other agent. Due to its advanced capabilities, these agents are becoming increasingly important to many industries across sectors. In healthcare, less than 1% of enterprise software applications use agentic AI in 2024. However, experts expect usage to surge to a staggering 33% by 2028. Agentic AI is not just a chatbot, but rather a functional digital assistant, capable of improving over time and taking on larger projects and assignments without human oversight.

In healthcare, AI agents in healthcare are now emerging in back office operations, especially within vital administrative workflows otherwise completed by doctors and human workers. Insurance capture and verification, inbound referral processing, document indexing, lab requisition forms and prescription refill processing are just some of the tasks that agentic AI is able to complete. For the healthcare industry specifically, these capabilities are leagues above generic AI. Especially because generic, public-facing models are typically trained on biased information, limited to the data it can access and limited through regularity barriers, agentic AI is the best way to complete these tasks efficiently and safely. In 2024, 3 in 5 physicians said they regularly used AI, a statistic that is only expected to increase in the coming years.

Experts have identified the top area of AI opportunity as addressing administrative burden through automation. Essentially, this alleviates the stress of completing backend tasks from doctors and human providers, and relies on AI to complete these tasks instead. Not only does this decrease the likelihood of human error, but it gives back time to providers to take care of what matters most: the patients.  

Transitioning to agentic AI in healthcare has already transformed the landscape for many essential groups. A better quality of life has been reported for not only individual practitioners, but also provider groups, health systems and ambulatory services. Across the board, the data is positive, with a 20% increase in revenue through increased productivity and over 50 hours saved weekly through AI-powered document processing. Additionally, systems using AI agents are experiencing 40% – 70% cost savings and a significant reduction in referral processing time, from 24 hours to under 30 seconds.

For patients, agentic AI is paramount to them receiving top of the line care. When doctors and nurses have more time to dedicate to face-to-face interactions with their patients, many receive faster diagnoses or even customized treatment. Patients are able to get to know their providers, building trust and camaraderie in the office, leading to an increase in overall patient satisfaction and experience.

Studies show that currently, over 70% of healthcare workers think that agentic AI is the future of healthcare and will be essential to the industry within the next five years. Most report that time-savings, efficiency, reliability, ease of use and accuracy are their main concerns when it comes to the decision to adopt agentic AI in the workplace. However, following their current trajectory, AI agents have the power to be a revolutionary tool in the space, alleviating stress and solving labor shortages in an industry that has long struggled with needing an extra hand.