Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse(localnewsmatters.org)
localnewsmatters.org
Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse
https://localnewsmatters.org/2026/07/15/kaiser-nurses-say-ai-workplace-surveillance-are-making-their-jobs-and-patient-care-worse/
379 comments
If you think using a machine to evaluate how well a human is showing empathy is a good idea, you probably shouldn't have any position of power.
That is surprising. My primary care provider had a different response. Basically he said something in line of
"You wouldn't believe how much of a relief it has been. In your last visit, you saw me typing everything you were saying, right? I don't have to. I can listen to you and take very specific notes as necessary as opposed to focusing on both typing and listening to you at the same time. It has bought my stress levels down to here." (Indicated by his hand lowering)
"You wouldn't believe how much of a relief it has been. In your last visit, you saw me typing everything you were saying, right? I don't have to. I can listen to you and take very specific notes as necessary as opposed to focusing on both typing and listening to you at the same time. It has bought my stress levels down to here." (Indicated by his hand lowering)
Workplace metrics and surveillance... What could possibly go wrong?
That being said, more than one (female at that) doctor has told me in confidence and based upon their observations during residencies, etc. that if I'm ever admitted, be very careful how I modulate my interactions with nurses. They're not all Florence Nightingale and Mother Theresa and there exist those who will @#$% you up on various pretexts or are just plain sloppy and negligent.
Despite all the moralising fluff, it's just a job, not some saintly vocation. Some safety oversight is needed, just as it is for any other work function. Still, can bet that anything 'Corporate' has mandated will be Goodharted up the wazoo.
That being said, more than one (female at that) doctor has told me in confidence and based upon their observations during residencies, etc. that if I'm ever admitted, be very careful how I modulate my interactions with nurses. They're not all Florence Nightingale and Mother Theresa and there exist those who will @#$% you up on various pretexts or are just plain sloppy and negligent.
Despite all the moralising fluff, it's just a job, not some saintly vocation. Some safety oversight is needed, just as it is for any other work function. Still, can bet that anything 'Corporate' has mandated will be Goodharted up the wazoo.
This problem with workplace AI interfering with nurses ability to manage healthcare obligations for their clients is not confined to Kaiser. UHC has also introduced the AI surveillance tools and are using it to do similar things.
The nurses at our local rural hospital are tagged and tracked wherever they go on the hospital campus. Time spent in one spot is part of their review.
I wondered why they zip in and out of the rooms, when just a few years ago they would spend fifteen to twenty minutes in each room. The patient load hadn't grown. The number of nurses has gone up, not down.
So I'm blaming the stupid metric on their evaluations for a worse standard of care.
I wondered why they zip in and out of the rooms, when just a few years ago they would spend fifteen to twenty minutes in each room. The patient load hadn't grown. The number of nurses has gone up, not down.
So I'm blaming the stupid metric on their evaluations for a worse standard of care.
The article mentions uses of AI but doesn't really give any examples of harm from AI. It does give specific examples where it sounds like Kaiser is optimizing calls to minimize cost rather than improve quality of care. It's also pretty easy to expect that the examples given (treating longer calls as a problem and penalizing nurses for giving more than 3 pieces of advice) reduce the quality of care.
the more I read about how AI is being used, the more I'm coming to the conclusion that despite me personally find it quite useful in my work, and even my personal life to some extent, it is a net negative to society as a whole, and if the choice is between zero AI or the AI that is being deployed, we'd be better out without it
what significant improvements to society or humanity have come about as direct result of AI, that wouldn't have been achieved without it? faster protein folding is the only one I can think of and that more a matter of "faster" than "impossible without AI"
I think at some point there's going to be some version of the Butlerian Jihad
what significant improvements to society or humanity have come about as direct result of AI, that wouldn't have been achieved without it? faster protein folding is the only one I can think of and that more a matter of "faster" than "impossible without AI"
I think at some point there's going to be some version of the Butlerian Jihad
They want you to blame "AI" like Claude jumped up and decided to start hassling nurses, not individuals in management
Every time “relentless push for efficiency destroying X” comes up I should repost this:
https://sohl-dickstein.github.io/2022/11/06/strong-Goodhart....
This is a well understood phenomenon.
https://sohl-dickstein.github.io/2022/11/06/strong-Goodhart....
This is a well understood phenomenon.
It sucks because AI reduces call center costs in many toil tasks very effectively, regardless of whether you want to help or dissuade customers - it's just well-suited to the task and it's going to accelerate. It's a win for capital and the technology implementers, even if it's a loser for the call center employees and callers.
Some of the tech is pretty scary. One big vendor's solution [0] can provide not just AI agents but also use AI to snoop on calls in progress, evaluating sentiment from both sides [1], verifying phrases are said - pretty dystopian in theory. From experience, these things tend to go downhill based on the attitude at the top - is the mission to slash costs or take care of customers? A 1000 decisions follow from this one, and like Jira, it can be a useful tool or a prison-like hell.
[0] https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/products/collateral/contac...
[1] https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/contact-center/webex-...
Some of the tech is pretty scary. One big vendor's solution [0] can provide not just AI agents but also use AI to snoop on calls in progress, evaluating sentiment from both sides [1], verifying phrases are said - pretty dystopian in theory. From experience, these things tend to go downhill based on the attitude at the top - is the mission to slash costs or take care of customers? A 1000 decisions follow from this one, and like Jira, it can be a useful tool or a prison-like hell.
[0] https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/products/collateral/contac...
[1] https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/contact-center/webex-...
My wife has been visiting an eye doctor several times. The doctor always use ChatGPT to double check (I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt; another way to frame this is the doctor didn't know shit and just used AI for answers).
I'm sure he doesn't think AI is making his job worse.
I'm sure he doesn't think AI is making his job worse.
Thinks that are not allowed in the EU thanks to the AI Act.
There is an unfortunate cycle that has been playing out this year in USA. Insurance companies are arming up with AI to deny billing codes charged by providers. Providers are arming up with AI to listen in on provider-patient sessions to prove the billing codes are legit (And teach providers to use keywords in session).
The loser, as always, is the patient's quality of care.
The loser, as always, is the patient's quality of care.
AI is making lots of jobs and workplaces worse.
> where they were found to have done everything right on a call — except staying on the line for more than 15 minutes
Do these idiots not know how intelligent assholes work? If you make this a policy, everyone who has a gripe will eventually learn to delay a call to 14 minutes and then make an absurd ask.
Do these idiots not know how intelligent assholes work? If you make this a policy, everyone who has a gripe will eventually learn to delay a call to 14 minutes and then make an absurd ask.
I can guarantee this is because the nurses don’t like the extra oversight and surveillance.
motivated reasoning: study in advance of nursing union contract negotiations
The sad thing is that there are many issues, but the study didn't really address them. One would hope for more effective critics.
The AI application I'd like to see would be to identify the elective hyper-utilizers (so we could try to demotivate them by addressing what's really bothering them). That would improve quality of care for them and quality of life for providers, and create time for outreach to the under-utilizers who need preventative care.
The sad thing is that there are many issues, but the study didn't really address them. One would hope for more effective critics.
The AI application I'd like to see would be to identify the elective hyper-utilizers (so we could try to demotivate them by addressing what's really bothering them). That would improve quality of care for them and quality of life for providers, and create time for outreach to the under-utilizers who need preventative care.
I'd like my providers to use Abridge for their notes, but because Abridge doesn't allow patients to opt out of using the data for training I decline every time.
Does "Manna" by Marshall Brain still sound futuristic?
https://marshallbrain.com/manna
https://marshallbrain.com/manna
> "Nurses fear that having long calls can lead to bad performance reviews"
> A company spokesperson said, "Kaiser Permanente does not use Average Handle Time to assess agent performance"
So uh, average time wasn't raised as a concern, calls beyond a certain threshold was. I wish this semantic discrepancy was better highlighted in the article.
> A company spokesperson said, "Kaiser Permanente does not use Average Handle Time to assess agent performance"
So uh, average time wasn't raised as a concern, calls beyond a certain threshold was. I wish this semantic discrepancy was better highlighted in the article.
Maybe healthcare shouldn’t be primarily for profit?
Kaiser was the first insurance company in america. If they cant make it work then we are lost.
And Kaiser already sucks big-time, so... that's not good.
Kaiser has priorities, healthcare being #4 or 5
I'd like to think it's not meant to make life better for a regular nurse, but rather to weed out the abusive ones? At least that's how I see it from my flawed, post-communist country perspective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpQamTrynBY
[edit] preemptively, if you're going to claim "but this isn't art so irrelevant" then I claim bull fucking shit. It's the same problem no matter how you slice it whether it be engineering, support, art, or medicine. Get real. Look inward. Touch grass. If you think AI is a good thing for your profession--whatever that profession might be--you're probably a delusional psychotic. It's OK, you'll thank me later.
[edit] preemptively, if you're going to claim "but this isn't art so irrelevant" then I claim bull fucking shit. It's the same problem no matter how you slice it whether it be engineering, support, art, or medicine. Get real. Look inward. Touch grass. If you think AI is a good thing for your profession--whatever that profession might be--you're probably a delusional psychotic. It's OK, you'll thank me later.
This is not an AI problem; this is a management problem. AI could just as easily be used to make their jobs better.
Obligatory dystopia reminder. It doesn't have to be this way https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
Population highly incentivized to denigrate new technology denigrates new technology. Film at 11.
FWIW my wife works for Kaiser and finds a lot of value in the the medical LLM tools available to her. She tells me being able to do live translation, summarize notes, and quickly get comprehensive answers save her time and help her give better care. Her older patients also frequently come in bringing AI-powered alerts from their apple watches that detected cardiac events.
It's annoying that we use broad terms to describe a set of technologies that in some ways can be problematic and in another ways are very beneficial. We gotta evaluate each of these as they come rather than talk about blanket bans.