As AI reshapes healthcare work, organizations must connect technology investments with redesigned roles, trusted governance, and stronger operating models.
According to Forrester, healthcare providers and health insurers are investing aggressively in AI.
But spending more on technology will not solve the industry’s hardest problems.
Care is moving beyond hospitals and clinics into a connected ecosystem of providers, insurers, digital platforms, community organizations, and local resources. At the same time, AI is changing how healthcare employees complete tasks, make decisions, and support patients and members.
Forrester’s Healthcare Workforce Reinvention report indicates that modernization now requires more than implementing new tools. Healthcare organizations must redesign how work gets done.
Perficient Contributes to Forrester’s Healthcare Workforce Research
Perficient is proud to be cited in Forrester’s Healthcare Workforce Reinvention report, which examines how AI is reshaping healthcare workforces and organizations. The research includes insights from Priyal Patel, associate vice president of healthcare at Perficient.
According to the report, healthcare providers and health insurers must prepare employees, redesign workflows, and address gaps in trust between decision-makers and the people expected to use and oversee AI.
We believe Perficient’s inclusion reflects the practical experience we bring to helping healthcare organizations connect AI adoption with workforce readiness and operating-model change.
AI Will Reshape Work, Not Simply Automate It
Healthcare’s AI conversation has focused heavily on automation. That focus is too narrow.
Adding AI to an outdated workflow may accelerate individual tasks, but it will not create a fundamentally better operating model. Organizations need to determine which activities AI should handle, where human judgment must remain central, and how accountability should work when people and intelligent systems make decisions together.
As Priyal Patel shared during her research interview with Forrester:
AI won’t shrink the workforce. It will reshape it, creating new opportunities for employees to advance into leadership and supervisory roles while amplifying the value of human expertise.
Forrester states, “AI is absorbing repetitive, rules-based, and administrative tasks, while humans retain responsibility for judgment, oversight, and complex decision-making.”
Healthcare organizations need defined responsibilities, practical training, trusted governance, and clear escalation paths. Employees must understand how AI reaches a recommendation, when they should intervene, and who remains accountable for the outcome.
Build the Foundations for Connected Care
Workforce reinvention is one part of a broader change. As care moves beyond the four walls of the hospital, healthcare organizations need four connected foundations:
- Interoperable data that gives AI and care teams reliable information across systems
- Human-AI operating models that align roles, workflows, and decision-making
- Accountable governance that defines oversight, performance standards, and escalation thresholds
- Ecosystem partnerships that connect clinical services with payers, technology providers, and community resources
Prior authorization shows why these foundations matter. Clinical notes, payer requirements, supporting documentation, and review activities often sit across separate systems. That fragmentation slows decisions and increases administrative work.
Perficient’s AI-driven Prior Authorization solution helps organizations extract clinical information, assess documentation readiness, strengthen submissions, and centralize review and prioritization. The goal is not automation for its own sake. It is a more connected workflow that supports faster decisions, stronger submission quality, and lower administrative burden.
Perficient’s Perspective: Measure What Changes, Not What Gets Deployed
Building on the report’s findings, we believe healthcare organizations should track whether AI reduces unnecessary work, strengthens decision quality, improves employee readiness, and helps patients or members move more quickly to the next step in their care. Trust also matters. AI cannot scale if employees do not understand it or feel equipped to question its outputs.
Perficient brings together healthcare expertise, data and interoperability capabilities, AI implementation, workflow redesign, governance, and organizational change. We help healthcare organizations build the foundations required to move from isolated AI experiments to responsible, scalable impact.
The healthcare workforce is already changing. Organizations that redesign work now will be better prepared to connect people, technology, and care across the expanding healthcare ecosystem.
Forrester clients can access Healthcare Workforce Reinvention (Forrester Research, Inc., September 2026) directly through Forrester here.
