“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”
-Paraphrasing of the Cheshire Cat’s remarks in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
I originally planned in this writing to focus on ways individuals can become familiar with artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Instead, I decided to focus on a more important question: where is your career headed?
A recent Gallup poll reported that approximately 15–18 percent of workers believed that AI could replace at least part of their jobs. Whether that number is accurate is less important than what it represents: growing concern about the future of work.
Those concerns are no longer theoretical.
A recent article about Missouri’s CoxHealth described the elimination of more than 50 medical coding positions through the implementation of AI. However, the story also revealed something equally important, reflecting a broader trend occurring across healthcare. As AI assumes more routine production coding activities, organizations are increasingly redeploying coding expertise toward:
- Auditing and validation functions;
- Complex case review;
- Revenue integrity;
- Compliance oversight; and
- Monitoring AI-generated coding recommendations.
In other words, AI is replacing portions of the coding workflow, not coding expertise.
We are seeing a similar evolution in clinical documentation integrity (CDI). AI can perform much of the initial chart review, allowing a CDI specialist to manage a larger patient census or focus on patient populations that previously received little or no CDI attention. The role is changing, not disappearing.
One legitimate concern is the loss of entry-level positions. Traditionally, new accountants, coders, and analysts learned their professions by performing routine tasks before advancing to more complex work. If AI assumes many of those responsibilities, how will the next generation gain experience? This challenge extends far beyond healthcare and deserves serious attention.
For those wondering whether AI will replace their job, stop wondering and start preparing for your next one.
Don’t wait for a pink slip. Begin building skills that demonstrate your ability to adapt, contribute, and lead in an AI-enabled environment.
Here are a few opportunities worth exploring:
Coding Professionals
Think beyond the traditional hospital or physician-office environment. Health plans and payers increasingly seek professionals with expertise in Hierarchical Condition Category (HCC) coding, Diagnosis-Related Group (DRG) validation, payment integrity, and auditing AI-generated coding recommendations. In many cases, your role will be to validate what providers and AI systems are submitting.
Health Information Management Professionals
Position yourself at the center of data governance. Join cybersecurity initiatives. Participate in vendor evaluations and contracting discussions involving revenue cycle vendors, health information exchanges, research organizations, and AI companies. Organizations need our professionals who understand how to protect personal health information (PHI) and ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place.
Health Information Compliance Specialists
Help your organization identify and prevent medical identity theft. Education should begin at pre-registration and continue through billing. Warning signs include demographic discrepancies, duplicate procedures for a single organ, conflicting blood types, and other indicators that a patient’s identity may have been compromised.
Privacy and Security Professionals
Your expertise is valuable far beyond healthcare. Industries such as agriculture, hospitality, education, financial services, and accounting all manage sensitive information and face increasing privacy and cybersecurity risks. Many organizations need privacy officers and data governance leaders with healthcare-level experience.
AI Documentation Integrity Specialists
A recent Annals of Internal Medicine study reported that documentation generated by ambient AI scribes may be less accurate than documentation created directly by physicians. Someone must evaluate the quality, completeness, and compliance of this content. AI-generated documentation requires oversight, validation, and continuous monitoring. This is an emerging opportunity for coding, CDI, and compliance professionals.
The bottom line is simple: opportunities exist, but they may not look like the jobs we have today.
Become familiar with AI. Read about it. Experiment with it. Volunteer to participate in AI selection committees. Offer to help evaluate vendors, develop test scenarios, review outputs, train users, or manage implementation projects. Even serving as a project coordinator or note-taker provides valuable exposure to technologies that will shape the future of healthcare.
Department leaders should begin educating staff about AI concepts, risks, and applications. Don’t be surprised if some team members already know more than you do. Encourage that curiosity, and leverage it.
Organizations should also begin preparing now for practical issues such as AI-related consent language, governance policies, and downtime procedures. When an AI system is unavailable, what processes will users follow? The answer should be determined before the outage occurs.
The future will arrive, whether we prepare for it or not.
Choose the road that leads where you want to go, and start walking it before someone else chooses the route for you.
By the way, this article was prepared with the assistance of AI.
Resources:
Zoe McIntyre. “Automation is replacing some medical coding jobs at CoxHealth.” Springfield Daily Citizen. June 12, 2026 https://sgfcitizen.org/economy-growth/business/coxhealth-automation-revenue-cycle/
Jaganathan Selvam. “Will AI Replace Medical Coders? The Truth Behind the Automation Buzz.” June 17, 2026. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-replace-medical-coders-truth-behind-automation-buzz-selvam-1elic/
“AI scribe tools produce lower quality medical notes compared to human clinicians.” April 17, 2026. https://mednews.uw.edu/news/AI-scribes-lower-quality
