Patients More Comfortable Than Doctors With AI-Driven Healthcare Decisions, Survey Finds

FRIDAY, Nov. 13, 2026 (HealthDay News) — Most Americans are comfortable with artificial intelligence (AI) weighing in on their healthcare, so long as it doesn’t take the wheel, a new survey says.

In fact, they’re more comfortable with AI-driven medicine than are their doctors, surveys revealed.

More than half of patients (56%) said they’d be comfortable with AI making diagnosis or treatment decisions, as long as their doctor can change or override those calls, according to survey results from the West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare in America.

However, a separate survey of healthcare providers revealed that doctors and patients are not entirely on the same page when it comes to AI.

Only 36% of doctors thought most of their patients would be comfortable with AI-driven healthcare decisions — a 20-percentage-point gap, the surveys found.

“These findings suggest reason for optimism about the role of AI in healthcare,” Gallup Global Managing Partner Joe Daly said in a news release.

But the survey data also showed that patients absolutely want a human doc in charge of final decisions regarding their health.

Fewer than 1 in 10 (9%) patients would want AI making medical decisions without review by a doctor, the survey found.

“The data show that patients are open to AI having a role in their care, particularly when they know a clinician can still step in,” Daly said. “As AI becomes more integrated into healthcare, understanding where patients are comfortable with its use versus where they still value human oversight will be critical.”

Patients also were specifically asked about their comfort with AI reviewing medical images like X-rays or MRIs or making medication decisions based on their medical history:

• About 53% of patients said they’d be comfortable with AI reviewing their images and 49% with AI deciding their prescriptions, so long as a doctor can override the decisions.

• About 52% would be OK with a doctor reviewing their images and making decisions with some assistance from AI, as were 45% when it came to medication calls.

• With no doctors involved, comfort dropped to 13% for reviewing images and 11% for drug decisions.

“AI has enormous potential to improve healthcare, but patients are sending a clear message that they are not afraid of using the technology, and want their providers involved, not replaced,” Timothy Lash, president and chair of the West Health Policy Center in Washington, D.C., said in a news release.

“This makes it critical that providers have the training to use it effectively and patients have trust in how AI is being used to guide medical decisions,” Lash said.

In the provider survey, nearly 9 in 10 (89%) reported using AI for work in the past year but only 1 in 5 (20%) said they’d had any formal training on AI.

Primary care doctors said they already routinely use AI, mostly for gathering information about medications (78%) or symptoms and conditions (76%). More than half (53%) have used it to review patients’ test results or imaging, and 50% have used it to write clinical notes.

Fewer than half have used AI to prepare patient instructions or after-visit summaries (49%), summarize or retrieve information from medical records (47%), or record and transcribe patient appointments (45%).

The patient survey involved 5,330 U.S. adults and had a margin of error of 1.7 percentage points. The provider survey involved 1,007 clinicians and had a 3.3-percentage-point margin of error.

More information

The Mayo Clinic has more on AI in healthcare.

SOURCE: West Health Institute, news release, Nov. 10, 2026