LAS VEGAS—As agentic artificial intelligence hits the mainstream—and messaging coming out this week demonstrates that it has—federal healthcare leaders are fully on board with moving quickly to put AI agents in the hands of patients.
Speaking at the 2026 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Global Health Conference & Exhibition on Thursday, Mehmet Oz, M.D., administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), said the use of AI agents could expand access to care in underserved areas such as rural communities and could give patients and Medicare beneficiaries better control of their medical information and help them make healthcare decisions.
"Why couldn't we, by the end of this year because of the massive warp speed advances that Amy [Gleason, CMS advisor] is making, why couldn't we start to introduce agentic AI for every beneficiary of Medicare? It may not be ready to launch by the end of this year, but by the time we're done in this administration, for sure, it should be out there," Oz said during a keynote speech at HIMSS26. "Telecom companies are doing this now. Banks are doing it. if you can buy a mortgage with agentic AI giving you advice, you should be able to use that same technology to help you pick which [Medicare Advantage] plan to use or which doctor to go to."
Oz found a largely receptive audience at HIMSS26 as healthcare startups, electronic health record vendors and other tech companies actively promoted AI tools and features during the four-day conference.
"The fundamental problem right now is that other sectors of the U.S. economy have advanced and been deflationary with their use of technology, while healthcare has remained inflationary," Oz said.
The CMS administrator argued the use of AI could help fill access gaps in rural communities. The Rural Health Transformation Program will invest $50 billion into rural healthcare ($10 billion per year) over five years, but those funds don't address the issue that many physicians don't want to live outside of urban areas, Oz noted.
"I can't buy mental health practitioners. They don't live there. They don't want to work there. They don't want to be there. It's not going to happen," he said, noting that the use of AI tools could extend physicians' reach into those communities.
The use of tele-robotics could extend the reach of OB-GYNs into underserved areas as well, he said.
Moving more care into patients' homes through the use of digital health and remote patient monitoring also could reduce costs by focusing care further upstream, Oz asserted. "I can win the battle for health, not in the ER or in the ICU, but in your home, in your kitchen, your bedroom, in your living room, with remote patient monitoring and better tools to validate that."
The CMS also is spurring the use of technology through its Health Technology Ecosystem initiative to modernize Medicare and advance next-generation digital health for patients, making it easier for patients to access their health data.
The CMS' 2026 tech goals center on two priorities—promoting an interoperability framework and increasing the availability of apps that help Medicare patients manage diabetes and obesity, access conversational AI tools and replace paper intake forms with digital check-in.
Since July, more than 700 healthcare organizations have joined the Health Tech Ecosystem pledge, which is completely voluntary, said Gleason, acting administrator, U.S. DOGE Service, and strategic advisor to the CMS. The goal is to have tangible results from these pledges go live by March 31. Just this week, Samsung and Microsoft announced new AI features aligned with the CMS initiative.
"I think the real power we're going to see is when we really have patients have these tools, 24 hours a day, in those 1,000 moments in a day when you have to make a decision about your health and your doctor's not there, and you need that guidance," Gleason said Thursday.
"I think we need to embrace this and help people understand how much this can help them, and it's not about marketing. It's about supporting their health and their decisions every day in a personalized way," Gleason said.
Health tech companies are ready to roll out agentic AI, but are Medicare beneficiaries ready to use these technologies?
A KFF survey last fall found that the vast majority of seniors are using digital health tools and are interested in making greater use of them to navigate the healthcare system and manage healthcare needs. About 8 in 10 Medicare beneficiaries ages 65 and older used a healthcare app or website in the last year, and a sizable majority said it made it easier to use the health system. Half of them use multiple apps (55%). There was no difference in the share of those 65 years or older who used an app or website to help manage their care in the last year (77%) and 30- to 49-year-olds (76%).
But, when it comes to AI, older seniors still have significant concerns about privacy.
AI looms large in plans to expand digital health tech, but only 31% of Medicare beneficiaries ages 65 and older trust AI “a great deal” (8%) or “a fair amount” (23%) to access medical records and provide personalized information and advice, the KFF survey found. Public trust in AI tools to make appointments or send messages or access medical records is generally low. And both the general public and seniors are worried about the privacy of health information controlled by government, tech companies or insurance companies. Hospitals fare better, but still half of the public overall is worried about the privacy of the health information they manage, KFF found.
Oz acknowledged that, based on insights from Medicare beneficiary data, older seniors currently don't trust AI, and that trust issue will be a challenge to advance new technology.
"Our biggest enemy, your biggest challenge, is nihilism," he told the healthcare audience.
"No one has gotten to them with the use case of why it will transform their life for the better. It seems like a tool that we use to market to them or help hospitals deal with their issues, but not necessarily their issues. We, as a group, need to embrace the reality that both in health and in medical we need to reach the people we want to use these tools and compel an idea to come up, which is, if we use this right, it will save lives, transform your ability to get access to care, allow us to manage a $1.8 trillion business, and we'll all be better off. If you use it wrong, shame on us. Also, we have to be engaged in that process. We can't run from it, and there is no reason for us not to envision being able to provide support in places where we will not have answers."
"We have such a wonderful opportunity to use technology to be a deflationary, stabilizing force, to allow improved care, better quality, and for that reason, across the board, allow us to fulfill our missions as Americans, that we will be shameful we didn't take it," Oz said.