Florida’s Tampa General Hospital leads AI integration in workforce
FLORIDA, UNITED STATES — Artificial intelligence is transforming the sector, and many front-line workers struggle to understand its applications.
In an article published in Becker’s Health IT by Laura Dyrda, she writes that Tampa General Hospital is addressing this dichotomy by focusing on AI literacy and ensuring that its employees appreciate and are up to speed on the technology transforming their operations.
AI literacy empowers healthcare transformation
Dr. Peter Chang, Senior Vice President and the Chief Transformation Officer at Tampa General, notes that the knowledge gap in healthcare systems is essential to close.
The teams on the front line communicate daily with patients and miss 90% of what AI has to offer, but it is not their fault, he said, because they are clinicians, not technologies.
Dr. Chang stresses the importance of structured collaboration between technologists and clinicians.
“That marriage between somebody that knows what’s technically possible with somebody that knows the workflow — to put those two pieces together — is super important,” he said.
Before deploying AI tools, Tampa General’s IT team embeds with staff to study workflows and identify pain points. As soon as frontline workers learn about the benefits of AI in their work, excitement blows up and requests follow like tidal waves, explained Dr. Chang.
“Once you show the front-line team how things are done and what capabilities could potentially be, then you open the floodgates,” Dr. Chang explains.
Dyrda notes that the set of demands requires robust governance to focus on improvements and avoid risks such as data loss or AI-generated hallucinations.
AI as a healthcare workforce enhancement, not replacement
A major hurdle in AI adoption is the fear that automation will eliminate jobs. Tampa General is countering this by framing AI as a workforce efficiency tool, not a replacement.
The hospital’s strategy focuses on emotional resonance—ensuring AI enhances, rather than disrupts, patient care experiences.
Success is not only a matter of technical training, but also a process of cultural change. Tampa General focuses on the long-term development of AI expertise, enabling clinicians to learn how to influence AI development, such as ambient listening and automatic prescriptions.
Dr. Chang explains that they aim to diversify people, not dislodge them. This strategy will keep AI-human-centered care friendly and maximize workflow.
“We’re trying to get the message out to our team that these automated and advanced analytics and artificial intelligence tools that we have, they aren’t meant to replace people,” he emphasized.
As AI transforms healthcare, the approach taken by Tampa General Hospital—prioritizing literacy, collaboration, and workforce trust—offers a blueprint for health systems worldwide.
