Conduent is leaning into artificial intelligence to help clients navigate budget constraints, improve service quality and streamline operations, according to Mandy Huckaby, vice president and general manager of customer experience management.

Speaking on Fierce Healthcare’s Podnosis podcast, Huckaby said the company is focused on helping clients “do more with less” by integrating AI across customer-facing and back-office functions. She emphasized that AI is not new to Conduent, which has used the technology for more than a decade.

“AI is literally just having technology augment an interaction,” Huckaby said. “We’ve been doing technology augmentation with chat, digital landscaping and other services for a long time.”

Conduent’s AI strategy targets three areas: pre-engagement automation to help customers self-serve, agent support tools to improve response speed and quality, and back-office enhancements such as document processing and legal text analysis.

In healthcare, Huckaby said AI is being used to support nurses and HR representatives, among others. The company also partners with vendors like Microsoft to deliver sentiment analysis and quality audits.

Huckaby said clients are increasingly looking for creative problem-solving and authentic customer advocacy. “It can’t just be reading off a script,” she said. “Our customers are looking for empathy and understanding.”

As industries face rapid technological change, Huckaby said Conduent encourages its teams to remain agile and forward-thinking. “Change is inevitable,” she said. “It’s our ability to be flexible and agile through that change.”

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With the longest government shutdown in U.S. history as a backdrop, for-profit providers and payers detailed the continued regulatory uncertainty and pressures on their businesses in the third quarter.

In this episode of "Podnosis," Editor Dave Muoio and Senior Writer Paige Minemyer break down the key trends for the third quarter, including how insurers shed light on strategic priorities, the impact of the ACA subsidy conversation and why providers saw a surprise revenue windfall.

To learn more about the topics in this episode:

• Insurers slammed by medical costs, regulatory pressures yet again in Q3
• Tax credit turmoil, cost pressures set stage for tumultuous ACA open enrollment
• Amid shutdown, health IT vendors say hospitals are cutting back on spending

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In a recent episode of Podnosis, Dr. Jerilyn Morrissey, chief medical officer at CorroHealth, called for a strategic overhaul in how hospitals approach clinical documentation and payer denials.

“Documentation has become the battlefield where clinical, financial and payer priorities collide,” Morrissey said. Tracing the evolution of medical records from ancient Egypt to modern electronic systems, she emphasized that while technology has enabled better data sharing, it has also introduced administrative overload and clinician disengagement.

Morrissey challenged the common belief that denials stem from provider error. “Denials are a payer strategy,” she said. “They distract and delay, and they’re designed to do just that.” She urged healthcare leaders to shift from reactive to proactive strategies, focusing on clear expectations around reimbursement.

Hospitals spend nearly $20 billion annually fighting denials, often by adding more staff or vendors. Morrissey cautioned against this approach, noting that more resources rarely yield better outcomes. She also questioned the effectiveness of AI-generated appeal letters, citing a low success rate and rapidly changing payer policies.

Instead, Morrissey advocated for integrating technology earlier in the care process. “Denials don’t start when we submit a claim,” she said. “They start at the point of documentation and decision-making.”

Looking ahead, Morrissey sees promise in AI for clinical support, pattern recognition and denial prediction. But she warned that trust in technology must be earned. “AI works most of the time, but not all of the time,” she said. “We’re not yet at a point where we can remove the human from the loop.”

Her advice to healthcare executives: embrace innovation with creativity and collaboration, and aim to be “constructively destructive” in reshaping the system.

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