Two leading healthcare organizations partner to ensure the responsible adoption of AI within community health centers.
The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology in healthcare has redefined the way hospitals and healthcare organizations coordinate workflows, streamline the patient experience, process data and much more.
AI adoption among physicians has, in fact, risen across the healthcare sector from 38% in 2023 to 66% in 2025, according to the American Medical Association.
The rate of regulation of AI, however, has not grown with it. Despite growing adoption and outcome improvements associated with healthcare AI, more than 60% of all community health centers (CHCs) and 70% of rural CHCs report that expenses were a challenge to implementing emerging technologies.
For this reason, the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) and the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) announced a new strategic partnership that will empower the safe and responsible adoption of AI technology at CHCs across the nation.
CHAI, a nonprofit organization founded by clinicians to advance responsible AI, and NACHC, a leading association advocating for the nation’s community health centers, now have a shared mission to ensure that CHCs and their patients are prioritized and positioned to benefit from the increasing use of AI technology in healthcare.
Repertoire Magazine recently spoke to Merage Ghane, director of Responsible Health in AI for CHAI, on the partnership and how the organizations plan to roll out the safe and secure use of AI technology across CHCs nationwide.
AI education and training
Community health centers help increase access to primary care by reducing barriers such as cost, lack of insurance, distance and language barriers, according to NACHC. CHCs provide care to all patients, regardless of their ability to pay, serving at least 1 in 10 people nationwide and at least 1 in 5 rural residents.
Post-pandemic, physicians and healthcare staff at CHCs have continued to face unprecedented challenges in providing primary healthcare. CHCs for many years have needed quick, reliable solutions to help serve their increasing patient populations, and that’s where AI comes in – allowing CHCs to adopt technology that streamlines workflows and optimizes patient care delivery.
“Many healthcare professionals are turning to AI tools, like ambient documentation, clinical decision support and EHR information retrieval tools as a lifeline to reduce burnout and reclaim time with patients,” said Ghane. “AI can help streamline workflows, support population health, improve revenue cycle management and enhance the quality of care for so many individuals with health needs across the country.”
The importance of healthcare organizations to safely and responsibly integrate AI technology is paramount, as the technology has rapidly expanded across the healthcare sector.
CHCs are positioned to substantially benefit from the implementation of AI technology, as they serve over 30 million people in the U.S., and are often the first care touchpoint for many patients.
“If CHCs are left behind in the AI transformation, the digital divide in healthcare will deepen,” said Ghane. “Responsible adoption ensures that AI supports and enhances, not replaces, clinical judgment, and it benefits patients and communities without unintended harm.”
Streamlining medical documentation processes
Medical processes and information are increasingly becoming digital. With more streamlined processes due to the use of AI, healthcare staff have more time to focus on the patient and their needs. In fact, nearly half of community health initiatives using AI report improved outcomes.
“The pace at which medical information is becoming digital and clinical guidelines are shifting is unprecedented – in 2020, medical knowledge was doubling at a rate of 73 days, compared to every 7 years in the 1980s or every 50 years in the 1950s,” said Ghane. “All of this together means that traditional ways of searching through EHRs for patient information, or searching through databases for clinical information, are limited and time-consuming.”
AI helps to fill gaps in administrative work, said Ghane, by synthesizing information, completing documentation and focusing staff’s attention on high-priority cases.
“AI has done a lot to support providers (of all kinds, not just physicians), to use the time for what really matters – caring for patients,” said Ghane. “At the same time, AI capabilities have matured, and many EHR and tech vendors are embedding these features directly into clinical systems. We’ve also come a long way to make sure that vendors know how to design solutions in a human-centered way, with their end users’ needs in mind.”
Keeping vendors’ needs in mind when developing healthcare AI allows practitioners at CHCs to more easily integrate the technology into their practices once it is adopted.
Safe and trustworthy adoption of AI
AI has the potential to ease workloads for healthcare staff and increase access to care for patient populations such as those served by CHCs, but only if adopted responsibly, says Ghane.
Organizations looking to implement AI technology must first receive training on how to properly use AI and integrate it into existing clinical workflows.
“AI has the potential to improve care quality, reduce administrative burden and close gaps in access, but only if adopted safely, fairly and with intentional guardrails,” said Ghane. “AI is already being integrated into EHRs, vendor platforms and clinical workflows, often without clinicians or administrators fully understanding how it works or what risks it carries. Without responsible implementation, AI can replicate or even amplify existing gaps, introduce new safety risks, or reduce trust in care systems.”
AI literacy, or the ability to understand, evaluate and engage with AI technologies responsibly in the field of medicine, allows clinicians and healthcare staff to feel empowered using AI, and more likely to continue to use it to achieve better quality patient care.
CHCs specifically, however, may also encounter challenges to implementing AI, such as fragmented data and interoperability issues, a lack of CHC-tailored vendor solutions (also impacted by data access issues) and limited IT and AI experts available in-house.
“These issues make it even more important for us to come together as a community to position CHCs towards readiness and responsible adoption,” said Ghane. “Without AI literacy, CHCs may unknowingly adopt tools that harm patients, risk patient data, increase liability, or waste resources. They may also misuse the tools and not know what to look out for if or when errors or issues arise.”
AI literacy, education and training are therefore a crucial part of the process for healthcare organizations beginning to work with AI. According to Ghane, this is especially true for CHCs, given they are often lower-resourced, understaffed, have less access to specialty care and serve highly complex patients.
“Building literacy now equips CHCs so they can make informed decisions, advocate for their needs and shape the AI ecosystem rather than passively be shaped by it,” said Ghane.
Partnering for trustworthy AI
In the first year of their partnership, NACHC and CHAI hope to achieve numerous goals, including tailoring the governance of AI playbooks to the CHC context and pilot adoption, understanding the unique needs of CHCs/safety nets when it comes to AI procurement, validation, adoption and use, developing and delivering AI literacy initiatives tailored to the CHC context (workshops, webinars, etc.) and providing educational resources to help align federal and state-level conversations on CHC and related industry-led perspectives on AI, according to Ghane.
“While we will not be co-developing any AI technology ourselves, we will likely help convene partnerships between vendors, CHAI certified assurance resource providers, and CHCs/CHC networks and provide the frameworks, best practices, and playbooks to guide them towards responsible co-development,” said Ghane.
Over time, AI could also enable new forms of team-based care and support better integration of behavioral, physical and social care.
“Potential tools that may arise as we continue to develop this technology include ambient documentation tailored for resource-constrained settings; population health dashboards that stratify risk with transparency; eligibility support tools for Medicaid or social services enrollment; patient-facing chatbots/outreach that are culturally and linguistically appropriate and coding or revenue cycle support tools,” said Ghane.
Leveraging NACHC and CHAI’s combined scale and expertise through NACHC’s Science, Education, Practice, and Policy (SEPP) framework, the organizations will collaborate on building a trusted AI infrastructure and standards specifically designed with CHCs and other safety-net providers nationwide.
The key elements of the partnership include Science: jointly conducting and supporting research to understand the adoption of AI in CHCs; Education: the development and dissemination of evidence-based educational programs and resources for CHC professionals’ AI literacy; Practice: supporting responsible integration of AI tools into clinical and operational workflows and Policy: advocating for policies, regulations, and standards fostering trustworthy AI use in primary care.
“In the near term, AI can help reduce documentation and administrative burden, identify and close gaps in care, improve outreach and engagement with high-risk patients, expand capacity through intelligent triage and advance workflow optimization,” said Ghane.
NACHC and CHAI’s vision for AI readiness to fully leverage AI going forward is to promote that CHCs are not just passive recipients of AI tools – but “co-creators, evaluators, and national leaders in equitable and responsible AI adoption,” says Ghane.
NACHC and CHAI plan to lead an inaugural survey of CHCs to assess current uses of technology and AI, identify gaps and surface opportunities for innovation in clinical settings, which will inform the co-development of future tools.
The organizations will also co-design an ‘AI in Healthcare for the Safety Net’ curriculum, with tailored content for CHC leaders, providers, and other safety-net organizations at various levels, to be available in virtual, hybrid and in-person formats and address the urgent need for AI literacy across the field.
“We want CHCs to have the knowledge, infrastructure, and governance capacity to assess AI for fit, safety, and value, ensuring that AI serves the mission of community health, not the other way around,” said Ghane. “I often make it a point to tell CHC leaders I speak to: you should not be adopting AI for AI’s sake – think about your organization, staff, and patients. Think about their needs, your strategy, and goals. Then ask the question, where can AI help me better meet those needs, align with strategy, and achieve goals? That’s where you start.”