How AI Is Transforming Healthcare Today: Rethinking the Health Care Journey

As AI becomes mainstream, more vendors will claim to be AI-enabled. For employers, the right question isn’t whether a provider uses AI. It’s how they use it, and whether they can show it improves care in a responsible and measurable way.

To cut through the noise, employers and plan sponsors should evaluate AI claims the same way they evaluate any clinical partner: by focusing on accountability, safety, and measurable outcomes.

When evaluating an AI-enabled healthcare partner, employers and plan sponsors should ask:

• Will their AI reduce friction for the patient across their primary care journey? 
• Are they using AI to reduce the administrative burden so clinicians can spend more time delivering care?
• Will their approach to AI use improve continuity and follow-through so patients stay on track after a visit?
• Is their goal to support clinicians and strengthen their care delivery?

At Maple, we use AI thoughtfully and safely to reduce administrative steps and improve workflows, while supporting clinicians rather than replacing them. That means using AI to strengthen care delivery and follow-through, maintaining clear boundaries around clinical responsibility, and building trust through transparency.

Patients, employers, and plan sponsors are feeling the strain as more Canadians struggle to access primary care, chronic conditions grow more complex, and clinicians face a rising administrative burden at the exact moment the system needs more capacity, not less. With demand rising and clinician shortages persisting, the system cannot scale by adding more steps or more administration. It needs smarter ways to create capacity.

While AI is often framed as a futuristic breakthrough, its most immediate impact is far more practical: AI can help us rethink how health care is delivered today by making the primary care journey more efficient and sustainable. Done responsibly, that means using AI to reduce friction and administrative burden so clinicians can spend more time delivering care.

The goal isn’t to replace clinicians. It’s to redesign the work around them so they can spend more time delivering care.

For employers and plan sponsors, this shift matters. When care is delayed or fragmented, the impact shows up across the workforce through missed work, productivity loss, rising benefits utilization, and an employee experience that feels increasingly disconnected from the realities of modern healthcare.

The real bottleneck in primary care is time

Primary care is not a single appointment. It’s a journey that requires intake, documentation, referrals, follow-up, and continuity over time. Yet in many settings, physicians spend hours each day on administrative work like charting, documentation, and coordination, which reduces the time available for clinical decision-making and meaningful patient support. In practice, this administrative load often extends beyond the visit itself, creating delays and frustration for both clinicians and patients.

Improving productivity is one of the clearest ways AI can help strengthen Canada’s healthcare system, especially as workforce shortages and demand continue to rise. AI has the potential to reduce the time physicians spend on repetitive administrative tasks, helping unlock clinical capacity without sacrificing quality.

How AI can redesign the primary care journey

The biggest opportunity for AI in healthcare isn’t flashy automation. It’s improving the steps that create friction and slow care down.

Before the visit: AI can support stronger intake by helping gather and organize patient information up front, so clinicians start appointments with context instead of spending the first portion of each visit collecting basics.

During the visit: When clinicians use AI to help with documentation, they spend less time typing and more time listening, asking better questions, and focusing on clinical decisions and next steps.

After the visit: Ongoing care depends on follow-through. AI-enabled workflows can support clearer documentation and more consistent next steps, helping patients stay on track and reducing the likelihood that gaps in care turn into escalation.

This is the practical promise of AI in primary care today: creating capacity and continuity without compromising care.

Why this matters for employers and plan sponsors

Employers are increasingly feeling the effects of the access gap. When employees can’t get timely primary care, issues are more likely to linger, worsen, or escalate into more disruptive and costly outcomes.

When AI reduces friction in the care journey, it can lead to:

• faster resolution of common health issues for many routine concerns
• better long-term management of chronic conditions through stronger continuity of care
• fewer avoidable escalations driven by delayed care when follow-through is more consistent
• improved employee experience and confidence in benefits
• stronger productivity and reduced workforce strain

AI makes these outcomes more achievable by reducing bottlenecks and supporting more consistent care over time.

The takeaway: rethink delivery, not just access

For employers and plan sponsors, the opportunity isn’t to adopt AI because it’s trending. It’s to partner with healthcare providers that use AI responsibly to expand access, improve continuity, and deliver better outcomes for employees in the moments it matters most.