Roughly 17% of adults in America lack a primary care physician, leaving millions searching for medical access in an increasingly constrained system. One Boston-area patient found no doctors taking new patients near her home, with some practices offering appointments a year and a half to two years out. This shortage has prompted Mass General Brigham (MGB), the state’s largest hospital chain, to pilot Care Connect—an AI-supported program that screens patients through chatbots before routing them to remote physicians.
Care Connect uses artificial intelligence to collect initial patient information in roughly 10-minute conversations, then generates suggested diagnoses and treatment plans for one of its 12 remote physicians. The program handles common urgent care requests including colds, nausea, rashes, sprains, and mild to moderate mental health concerns, operating round-the-clock seven days a week. By mid-December, Care Connect doctors were seeing 40 to 50 patients daily, with expansion planned to make the service available to all Massachusetts and New Hampshire residents with health insurance by February.
Physician Concerns and Safety Questions
The program has generated debate within MGB’s medical community. Dr. Madhuri Rao, a primary care physician at an MGB health center, expressed frustration that leadership “puts their money into specialties” rather than addressing the core primary care shortage, which she attributes partly to primary care doctors earning 30% to 50% less than specialists. Dr. Michael Barnett, an internist involved in unionization efforts, called Care Connect “a band-aid for a broken system,” arguing that MGB should invest more in higher pay and staffing rather than AI solutions.
Safety experts from Stanford University’s Healthcare AI Applied Research Team noted that while AI can efficiently summarize patient encounters, the safest current use remains urgent care issues—upper respiratory infections, urinary tract infections, rashes, and musculoskeletal injuries. For patients with multiple chronic conditions or serious illnesses like heart disease or cancer, human physicians who develop ongoing relationships remain irreplaceable. K Health, the company behind Care Connect’s platform, contends the program safely serves complex patients who otherwise lack options besides emergency rooms, though it frames AI primarily as a supplement to, not replacement for, in-person primary care.
MGB pledged $400 million over five years for primary care services, though this includes the Care Connect contract amount, which the hospital system has not disclosed.
This article is an AI-assisted summary. All facts and figures are drawn from the original report: https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/ai-primary-care-doctors-shortages-massachusetts-mass-general-brigham/