Washington, D.C. — Senior care providers are sending a clear message to federal health officials: without real investment in digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence will never reach the residents who need it most.
That was the consistent theme across a wave of industry comments submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services in response to its request for input on accelerating AI adoption in clinical care. Nursing home operators, advocacy groups, and health technology companies all pointed to the same core problem — the long-term care sector has been left behind digitally, and enthusiasm for AI won’t fix that if the underlying infrastructure isn’t there first.
“Adoption of artificial intelligence in clinical care will remain extremely challenging, if not impossible, without more federal support to eliminate the digital interoperability infrastructure gaps,” wrote Daniel Ciolek, Associate Vice President of Therapy Advocacy at the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living, in the association’s formal submission.
A Problem Decades in the Making
The digital gap in long-term care didn’t appear overnight. For decades, federal health IT policy focused on hospitals and physician practices, leaving nursing homes and assisted living communities to piece together technology on their own. The result is a fragmented ecosystem of disconnected systems and outdated tools — a poor foundation for the kind of data sharing that AI requires.
AHCA/NCAL warned that without explicit federal recognition of these challenges, technology vendors have little incentive to build AI tools for nursing homes, creating what the association called “a cycle of market neglect.” The financial pressures facing operators only compound the problem — thin margins make major tech investments hard to justify.
What the Industry Is Asking For
AHCA/NCAL’s recommendations are pointed: require age-stratified bias testing for AI tools used with Medicare patients, expand interoperability standards to include geriatric data elements, and align payment policy to reward AI adoption in care settings. The association also pushed for infrastructure support for smaller, under-resourced facilities that can’t absorb large upfront technology costs.
LeadingAge expressed enthusiasm for AI’s potential to cut administrative burden and improve care transitions, but cautioned that federal strategies “often fail to account for the significant variation in digital maturity” across provider types. PointClickCare urged CMS and HHS to develop clear frameworks on bias, cybersecurity, and documentation integrity — and stressed that AI should support, not replace, licensed professionals.
The Road Ahead
HHS hasn’t announced its next steps after the comment period closed. But the volume and consistency of the industry response signals that long-term care isn’t content to be an afterthought in federal AI policy. Providers say they’re ready — they just need Washington to meet them where they are.
