Why do we continue to make patients wait?

Everywhere you look in health IT news, you’ll find headlines announcing the latest amazing (potential) results of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), etc. As we explore these new horizons, we should keep an eye out for studies calling out unintended consequences.

Michele Samorami and colleagues published a study worth noting titled “Overbooked and Overlooked: Machine Learning and Racial Bias in Medical Appointment Scheduling.” They point out one of the weaknesses of AI systems: If there is bias in the data used to develop the system, the results will reflect that bias.

In addition to the bias noted in the title, part of what continues to irritate me is the widely held assumption that waits and delays are unsolvable. The very system described in the study was designed to optimize the time of clinicians at the expense of patients. With rare exception, making an appointment to see a clinician is a miserable experience. Because this miserable experience is so ubiquitous, I will not waste your time describing something about which you are probably intimately aware.