{"id":705008,"date":"2026-06-15T07:05:25","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T07:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/705008\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T07:05:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T07:05:25","slug":"ai-is-making-your-medical-bills-higher-not-lower-pwc-report-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/705008\/","title":{"rendered":"AI is making your medical bills higher, not lower, PwC report shows"},"content":{"rendered":"

TL;DR:\u00a0You might have expected AI to cut healthcare costs, whether it\u2019s by reducing paperwork, automating the doctor\u2019s notes, or thinning out hospital staff. But\u00a0a new 60-page PwC report suggests the reverse<\/a>: So far, one of its most widespread uses is making medical bills bigger. It\u2019s an example of how AI isn\u2019t only good at making tasks more efficient\u2014it\u2019s also very good at finding more granular ways to boost a sector\u2019s bottom line.<\/p>\n

What happened:\u00a0AI is one of five potential drivers of health costs climbing up to 9% in 2027\u2014matching this year\u2019s rate, the highest since 2010\u201311\u2014per PwC. The key reason: AI note-taking tools are documenting more specifics about diagnoses and medical complications that a rushed human clinician might have lumped into one broad \u201ccode\u201d\u2014a standardized billing label that tells insurers what to pay. Those extra details can justify a higher severity (read: higher paying) code, even if the actual care a patient receives is the same as before.<\/p>\n

The devil is in the billing details:\u00a0One Blue Cross Blue Shield analysis found that some hospitals saw the billing code for acute posthemorrhagic anemia in new mothers jump from 4% to 12.3% of maternity admissions between 2022 and 2025. The number of blood transfusions (a common treatment for this condition), meanwhile, barely budged. An audit of the hospital system with the steepest rise in this code found that\u00a0fewer than 20% of the cases actually met the clinical criteria<\/a>\u00a0for a diagnosis. The rise in higher-intensity coding coincides with hospitals\u2019 growing use of AI for billing. According to BCBS, \u201ccoding intensity\u201d added $22 million to maternity spending at the hospitals studied in three years.<\/p>\n

The big but:\u00a0AI is the report\u2019s top-ranked new pressure, but it\u2019s not the biggest driver of costs overall\u2014old standbys like labor and supply costs\u00a0still account for more of the increase<\/a>, one of the report\u2019s authors told Healthcare Dive. And AI tools\u00a0could eventually push the other way<\/a>, driving down costs by automating hospital administrative work or catching diagnoses earlier.<\/p>\n

Bottom line:\u00a0AI is often pitched as a way to optimize whatever industry it touches\u2014trimming waste and making systems faster and cheaper. But in healthcare, one of the first things it has optimized is how to charge you more. As one health insurance exec put it: Companies \u201cwill take AI and say, \u2018How can I use this to further my self-interest?\u2019<\/a>\u201d \u2014WK<\/p>\n

This report<\/a> was originally published by Tech Brew<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to\u00a0Fortune Gulf Brief. Every Tuesday, this new newsletter delivers clear-eyed, authoritative intelligence on the deals, decisions, policies, and power shifts shaping one of the world\u2019s most consequential regions, written for the people who need to act on it. Sign up here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TL;DR:\u00a0You might have expected AI to cut healthcare costs, whether it\u2019s by reducing paperwork, automating the doctor\u2019s notes,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":705009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,87660,253,8378],"class_list":["post-705008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-health-care-service","tag-healthcare","tag-morning-brew"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/705009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}