92% of health leaders want AI vendors with deep expertise
NEVADA, UNITED STATES — Nine in ten United States healthcare leaders say deep domain expertise is a critical requirement when evaluating artificial intelligence (AI) vendors.
Clinical expertise tops AI vendor requirements
According to a national survey by Carta Healthcare, as reported by Healthcare IT Today, the Carta Healthcare survey found that 92% of healthcare leaders rate deep healthcare domain expertise as critical in AI vendor evaluation, with half of all respondents assigning it the maximum possible score.
Where AI ownership is clearly defined within health systems, it rests most often with clinical leadership (41%), compared to executive teams (19%) or information technology (IT) departments (15%).
A separate Accenture study found that fewer than two-thirds of patients are committed to staying with their current provider, adding pressure to how health systems are selecting technology partners.
According to Carta Healthcare, the 92% result was the survey’s most lopsided finding, reflecting broad consensus that general-purpose AI tools lack the specificity health system operations require. The data points to a growing divide between commodity AI and domain-specific solutions health systems are actually willing to adopt and scale.
One in four healthcare organizations (26%) reported no clear owner for AI strategy, despite the technology actively generating measurable value in clinical and administrative settings.
EHR integration tops AI scaling barriers
Electronic health record (EHR) integration difficulty is the leading adoption barrier, cited by 44% of respondents, followed by lack of executive sponsorship or budget (37%) and competing organizational priorities (33%).
Clinician trust, ongoing cost, and regulatory uncertainty each registered at 26%. Asked what would most accelerate adoption, 48% named an EHR-integrated solution, ahead of peer case studies with measurable outcomes (36%) and vendors willing to assume performance risk (28%).
The findings suggest health systems are not waiting for AI to simplify, but for it to fit more cleanly into existing clinical infrastructure and workflows. Performance accountability is becoming a baseline expectation in the vendor selection process.
“Organizations are seeing value and still can’t scale it. The biggest barrier to adoption is whether the technology fits the way their teams already work,” said Brent Dover, chief executive officer of Carta Healthcare.
Even where AI has delivered measurable results, 71% of healthcare organizations are not expanding deployment at pace, signaling a gap between proven performance and organizational readiness to scale.
For healthcare outsourcing providers, the Carta Healthcare findings define the bar AI vendors and service partners must now clear. Domain expertise, EHR compatibility, and measurable outcomes data are the same standards applied to offshore teams handling revenue cycle management (RCM), clinical documentation, and prior authorization support.
Outsourcing firms that embed healthcare-specific knowledge, EHR-integrated workflows, and performance accountability into their service models are well-positioned to meet the criteria health systems are prioritizing. As AI ownership consolidates under clinical leadership, demand for clinically credible operational partners is set to grow.
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Disclosure: Outsource Accelerator uses AI tools in the backend of its editorial workflow. Every article is reviewed and verified by a human editor before publication.
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