The Council for Healthcare AI Responsibility and Safety (CHAIRS) today announced its formation as a body convening healthcare leaders, regulators, and technologists to advance the national conversation on responsible AI deployment in patient care. The council's founding members include two former leaders of The Joint Commission — the nation's leading hospital accreditation body — alongside a senior health plan compliance executive and a health system innovation executive who is also a serial digital health founder.
Convened and supported by Verbal AI Technologies, CHAIRS was formed to address a specific and urgent problem: as AI agents, scribes, and virtual care tools are deployed at scale across healthcare, the systems meant to audit their performance remain stuck in analog processes that cannot keep pace.
The council synthesizes guidance from regulators, accreditors, clinical leaders, and technology developers, publishes benchmark data and reference materials, and convenes leaders to advance a shared, evidence-based view of how AI should be deployed in patient care. Its work centers on what it calls the "adherence gap," the widening distance between the protocols healthcare organizations write and what actually happens in practice.
Alongside its formation, CHAIRS announced the forthcoming publication of its inaugural report, The Adherence Gap: 2026 State of Clinical Quality & AI Oversight Report. The report, which published in August, synthesizes federal regulatory shifts, proprietary market data, peer-reviewed clinical evidence, and the latest AI governance trends to document where current QA methods fall short and what healthcare organizations can do to address the risk.
Council members
CHAIRS founding members include:
Fred Brown, Former Chairman, The Joint Commission & American Hospital Association
Dr. Mark Chassin, MD, FACP, MPP, MPH, Former President, The Joint Commission
Todd M. Gower, Chief Compliance Officer, L.A. Care Health Plan
Dr. Lyle Berkowitz, Founder and Chairman, KeyCare, health innovation executive at Northwestern Medicine
About CHAIRS
The Council for Healthcare AI Responsibility and Safety (CHAIRS) convenes healthcare leaders, regulators, and technologists to advance the national conversation on responsible AI deployment in patient care. Convened by Verbal AI Technologies in 2026, the council synthesizes guidance from regulators, accreditors, clinical leaders, and technology developers and publishes benchmark data and reference materials that inform health system, payer, and policy decisions. Members serve in their professional capacities. More at www.chairs.health.
