When James Van Der Beek announced he had been diagnosed with colorectal cancer, it was the kind of news that stunned many of us. I grew up watching Dawson’s Creek, and James’ character of Dawson Leery was iconic for many of us. James was 47 and by all appearances a healthy person. Someone who, under the standard rules of medicine, wouldn’t have been anywhere near a scheduled screening. He passed away last week, leaving behind a wife and five children and a mourning public that has now been confronted with a hard truth. Colorectal cancer is now the leading cause of cancer death in the United States for people under 50.
Colon cancer has long been considered a disease that comes with old age. However, the trend line of disease has been moving in the wrong direction for years, in a population we long assumed wasn’t at risk. And while researchers continue to investigate the why, there’s a parallel conversation we aren’t having nearly enough. One that has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with operations.
Early detection changes everything when it comes to treating colorectal cancer. The five-year survival rate for localized-stage diagnosis is over 90 percent. Catch it late, and that number drops dramatically. For every 1 month of delay in treating colorectal cancer, the risk of death increases by more than 12%. This means that for a patient with undetected cancer, delaying colonoscopy screening by just 3 months increases mortality by 39%.
Colonoscopies are incredibly effective at preventing colorectal cancer altogether by treating precancerous polyps or by detecting it at a very early stage when it is curable. With the screening age recently lowered to 45 years old, we are getting better at recognizing that this disease can no longer be discounted for the young. However, the “guidelines updated” and “patients screened” gap remains enormous.
What I’ve come to understand in building AI for health systems and working alongside provider groups across the country is that the breakdown rarely happens in the exam room. It happens before anyone gets there. A patient is flagged as due for a screening. A referral goes out. And then — nothing. The follow-up doesn’t happen. The scheduling call doesn’t connect, and when it does there is still the process of getting the patient scheduled for a procedure or consult, and then the prep process with a nonzero drop off along the way at each step.
And this isn’t about placing blame on the admin side of the house for dropping the ball, it’s recognizing that our healthcare administration system is facing an existential crisis.
Administrative overhead in U.S. healthcare now exceeds $1 trillion annually, accounting for roughly a quarter of all healthcare spending. That’s not money going toward treatment, research, or care delivery. It’s the cost of a system struggling to manage itself. And the people carrying that burden are burning out. Many clinics and practices see over 50 percent turnover in administrative staff within a two-year period. In most industries, that’s an HR problem. In healthcare, it’s a patient experience problem, an operational efficiency problem, and a revenue problem all at once.
The ripple effects reach into the exam room itself. Clinicians now spend approximately one-third of their working hours on administrative tasks, and 80 percent say that burden contributes to burnout. A physician who is stretched thin is less able to catch what matters. A practice that can’t hold onto its administrative staff is less able to follow up with the patient who was supposed to schedule a colonoscopy three months ago.
The good news is that this is a solvable problem. Not entirely through clinical innovation or new therapeutics, but through better systems doing the unglamorous work that currently falls through the cracks. Outreach. Pre-screening. Scheduling. Reminders. Follow-ups. Closing the loop between a recommendation and a completed appointment. This is exactly the kind of high-volume, time-sensitive, detail-oriented coordination that AI is genuinely well-suited to support.
2026 will be the year that patient-facing AI really takes off. Eighty percent of hospitals now use AI to enhance patient care and workflow efficiency and patient engagement in AI has increased 20x year over year. Investors are paying attention too. AI health startups are raising roughly 83 percent more per deal than non-AI companies.
While the latest statistics behind rising colorectal cancer rates weigh heavily on my mind, I’m optimistic that we now have the technology to at least give patients the opportunity for early screenings so they have the ability to seek effective treatment that could save their lives. Modern AI technology isn’t replacing care or taking the jobs of admins; it’s making sure care actually reaches the people it was meant to reach.
That feels like the kind of problem we should refuse to leave unsolved.
Photo: Boarding1Now, Getty Images
Jaimal Soni is the Co-Founder and CEO of Insight Health, the clinical agent platform for healthcare. Before founding Insight Health, Jaimal served as the Director of Product Management at Segment, where he led the company’s healthcare and generative AI product lines and was part of the team through Twilio’s acquisition. He has spent his career at the intersection of data, AI, and enterprise software, with a through line in healthcare that now anchors his work at Insight Health.
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