By DAVID KIRK

My father called me from a hospital bed a few years ago. He had been admitted to a small hospital with an abdominal infection, and his surgeon had offered him an open operation. He wanted my clinical perspective. I knew that in his condition, he was unlikely to survive general anesthesia and the open procedure. I spoke to the surgeon myself and asked why he wouldn’t ask interventional radiology (IR) to drain the infection instead.

The surgeon told me that the hospital lacked the equipment required for IR, and without IR, the open operation was the best option on his menu. After hearing my assessment, he agreed and helped arrange the transfer to a hospital that could drain the infection.

I still think about how that single phone call may have saved my father’s life. His surgeon wasn’t negligent. He made the best decision based on the information in front of him. However, my father was able to put another option on the table because he knew a physician to call.

Most families don’t have a physician to consult when their doctor makes a recommendation. For generations, patients have only known what the person in the room with them chose to share, bounded by what their equipment and offerings could provide. Today’s patients, however, have artificial intelligence options in their pocket. A patient can now ask their preferred AI model, “Is surgery really my only option?” and get an answer that sounds confident and informed. Hungry for options, patients are asking these questions in enormous numbers.

In many ways, this is a welcome rebalance. It puts information in patients’ hands and allows them to play a more active role in their own healthcare, but it also opens the door to misinformation and distraction, and that can be life-threatening. Researchers at Mass General Brigham found that when given only a patient’s presenting symptoms, general-purpose AI chatbots failed to produce an accurate initial or differential diagnosis 80% of the time. In July, a Florida pastor sued OpenAI after ChatGPT provided him with “extremely dangerous medical recommendations” that delayed his treatment for pulmonary embolism. My primary care colleagues have shared how the presence of an AI-suggested diagnosis has transformed a 10-minute prescription refill into an hour-long conversation about something unrelated to why the patient came in that day.

Patients are also adopting AI much faster than their physicians. The West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare in America reports that among US adults who use AI for health information or advice, 59% use AI tools to research on their own before visiting a doctor, and 56% use them to research after visiting a doctor. Physicians are using AI too, but for a different job. According to the AMA, more than 80% of physicians now use AI professionally, mostly for administrative work, yet only 13% are using it for diagnosis, the very thing their patients are asking it to do. The reality is that without AI support, most physicians are realistically only able to review 3% of a patient’s chart.

Now that patients have AI to help them advocate and question, the physician is at risk of becoming the least-informed person in the room.