The list of what artificial intelligence promises to fix in healthcare is long: administrative burden, diagnostic accuracy, care coordination, staffing shortages. But the things it could break, according to executives at major health systems, deserves equal attention.
When asked to name the most dangerous trend in healthcare today, leaders from systems including Baystate Health, Banner Health and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital pointed to AI — not as a technology to reject, but as a force whose adoption is outpacing the governance, human investment and cultural change required to make it work safely. Their concerns gather around three themes: the erosion of human judgment and connection, inadequate accountability frameworks and the workforce consequences of deploying AI without deliberate reskilling.
“Artificial intelligence is the most dangerous trend in healthcare today,” Peter Banko, president and CEO of Springfield, Mass.-based Baystate Health. “Better said, the promise of AI is the most dangerous trend. Vendors are peddling potential partnerships using AI to transform literally every part of our clinical enterprise and business. AI can be a most profound catalyst (in the order of magnitude of the Industrial Revolution) that can help us solve massive systemic challenges. Before taking that dangerous lunge, we need to understand and put frameworks into place around the governance, ethical, and emotional impact of AI on our industry.”
That concern — adoption running ahead of accountability — is shaping how Steve Davis, CEO of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, thinks about the workforce implications of AI-enabled care.
“The most dangerous trend in healthcare today may be the assumption that AI adoption alone will improve performance, without equal investment in the human judgment, analytical skill, and training required to use it safely and effectively,” Mr. Davis said. “AI can strengthen decision-making, but only if organizations pair adoption with deliberate development of the critical thinking and analytical skills needed to use these tools safely and effectively.”
Source: Becker's Health IT, 26 August 2026
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