The Slow Revolution: AI Skills Demand in U.S. Healthcare Job Postings Exploring Trends in Healthcare (Hospitals Subsector) AI Adoption

The Slow Revolution: AI Skills Demand in U.S. Healthcare Job Postings Exploring Trends in Healthcare (Hospitals Subsector) AI Adoption | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article The Slow Revolution: AI Skills Demand in U.S. Healthcare Job Postings Exploring Trends in Healthcare (Hospitals Subsector) AI Adoption Faezeh Najafi This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-9371824/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Artificial intelligence reduces the cost of prediction, yet its adoption inside hospitals has proceeded far more slowly than in finance or professional services. This paper investigates why by measuring explicit AI skill requirements in 13,843,830 U.S. hospital job postings from 2,432 employers spanning 2015 to 2023.Using the Burning Glass Technologies (BGT) vacancy dataset and a conservative, time-stable keyword definition, the analysis shows that only about one in a thousand hospital postings (0.11%) explicitly requires AI skills.The central finding is that adoption is organizationally situated: IT and research roles are roughly nine to twelve times more likely to list AI skills than administrative roles (the reference category), while clinical and teaching positions remain well below the baseline.A monotonic educational gradient further reveals that PhD-level postings are sixteen times more likely to demand AI than high-school-level ones.At the employer level, a 10 percentage-point higher research posting share is associated with a 0.13 percentage point higher AI posting share — a sizable effect relative to the 0.1 to 0.2 percentage point typical hospital mean.These patterns hold across alternative keyword definitions, sample restrictions, and clustering assumptions.Together, the findings point to organizational and regulatory frictions — not the absence of useful AI applications — as the principal barriers to broader, clinically situated diffusion, and suggest that complementary investments in analytics workforce development and governance capacity are necessary preconditions for meaningful hospital AI adoption at scale. Full Text Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Supplementary Files supplementary.docx Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-9371824","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":623357088,"identity":"06bd9918-f9da-494a-8e23-2157e885e3c0","order_by":0,"name":"Faezeh Najafi","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAAlElEQVRIiWNgGAWjYBAC9mYg8QHMTCBSC89hBgbGGQwGpGg5wMDAzEOaFnb2h59t2/4w8LPnGBCphZkhWTq3zYBBsucNkVrsmRkOSOecMWAwuEG8LYzNvy2AWuxJ0MLMJs1QAbRFgngtbGyWPRXGPBJnnhUQqYX/+OMbPwzk5PjbkzcQpwWulTTlo2AUjIJRMArwAwA//iDyGB7tNQAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==","orcid":"","institution":"Virginia Tech","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Faezeh","middleName":"","lastName":"Najafi","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2026-04-09 18:39:57","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":"","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-9371824/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-9371824/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":107868930,"identity":"b053a622-7067-47bd-bbf9-e00efc33f9b4","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-04-27 07:35:04","extension":"pdf","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":1543430,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"TheSlowRevolutioninHealthcare.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-9371824/v1_covered_f3704988-2458-4d01-ac73-1a6e3544c21e.pdf"},{"id":107030282,"identity":"87b47e36-4e58-4a18-9ac1-c2b11ffee413","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-04-16 02:50:33","extension":"docx","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":1024630,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"supplementary.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-9371824/v1/c6448058ba7d19f49d12c4da.docx"}],"financialInterests":"No competing interests reported.","formattedTitle":"The Slow Revolution: AI Skills Demand in U.S. Healthcare Job Postings Exploring Trends in Healthcare (Hospitals Subsector) AI Adoption","fulltext":[],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":false,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":true,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":true,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":true,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-9371824/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-9371824/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"Artificial intelligence reduces the cost of prediction, yet its adoption inside hospitals has proceeded far more slowly than in finance or professional services. 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