Transcript

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Let me ask you something. So, last week how many hours did you spend doing work that didn't require a medical degree? Now, I'm not talking about patient care. I'm talking about everything else. The prior authorizations, the referral letters, rewriting the same patient instructions for the 10th time, those staff emails, that inbox that never ends. Now, if you're being honest with yourself, it's probably around 4 to 5 hours, maybe more. For some of you, it's a lot more. So, today I want to show you how to get those 5 hours back. Not someday, not after taking some big course, but this week. So, let's talk about it.

Welcome to another edition of Bootstrap MD. My name is Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. This is the podcast for physician and healthcare entrepreneurs, and I'm so glad you're here. Now, if you've been following us for a while, I know you're going to roll your eyes and "Okay, Mike, didn't you just do an AI episode?" I did. And a couple weeks ago, I gave you the stack, you know, the five tools that doctors actually need. And if you missed that one, go back and listen. I believe it's episode 346. But, here's what I realized after that episode came out. A bunch of you went up and signed for those tools, but it sounds like nothing's changed. So, you've got the accounts, but you've still got that inbox that is blinking like a flashing red light at 9:00 p.m. Because a stack isn't a system. Tools aren't time. But, knowing which hammer to buy doesn't build you that house. So, today's the episode that probably should have come first, not which tools, but the system for handing work off. What's happening your Tuesday afternoon, not the future of medicine.

So, here's the thing. Most physicians I talk to, and I talk to a lot of them, they think they don't have a time problem, or they think they have a time problem, but they don't. They actually don't have a time problem. What they really have is a delegation problem. Just think about it. You were trained to do everything yourself, right? Medical school rewards the person who stays the latest, who checks everything twice or three times, who never hands anything off. And that training made you a great doctor, but it's also the same thing that's probably burning you right now. So, here's the reframe I want you to hold on to for this episode. I want you to write it down if you're not driving. But, AI isn't a tool. What I want it to be for you is a chief of staff. A tool is something you have to learn, another login, another tutorial, another thing on your plate. You don't need more things on your plate. But, a chief of staff is different. A chief of staff is someone you hand things off to. So, every CEO you've heard of has one. Nobody expects the CEO to write the first draft of everything, schedule everything, summarize everything. But, you've been trying to be the CEO, the chief of staff, and the intern all at once. And then you wonder why you're typing patient letters at 9:00 at night. The writing, the summarizing, the explaining things again and again, that's not doctor's work. That's chief of staff work. And as of today, I want to give you one.

Now, I didn't start here. Let me tell you how I actually come into this, because it wasn't impressive. The first thing that I ever handed off to AI, it wasn't anything clinical. It wasn't anything smart. If I remember, it was just show notes for my podcast. And if you've ever podcast, you know you finish a great interview, you're feeling good, and then you've got to sit down and condense a 45-minute conversation into show notes, every single episode, and it was eating me alive. So, years back, this is before ChatGPT, before any of this was cool, I found this tool called Jarvis. I think it's now called Jasper. I don't even know if it's around, to be honest with you. Some of you marketing folks might remember it. But, it was still clunky. It was really clunky, and you had to fight with it, and half the time it gave me something I couldn't use. But, here's the thing, even though it was clunky, it took a job that ate my hour of my evening and turned it into a few minutes of cleanup. It wrote up the rough draft, I fixed it up, and then I was done. And that's when it hit me, I wasn't using some fancy tool, I just delegated something for the first time in years. A piece of work got done, and I wasn't the one who did it. And the tools today, it's night and day, you know, we've got Claude and ChatGPT and Gemini. And I'm using Claude for the most part, Claude Cowork, and our agents I've used Hermes Hermes agent. Which is exactly why this episode exists.

Now, let me make this real for you because my story is just my story. I know a couple of internists, both are board certified, probably about both are a decade in. Both are employed physicians. They have the same kind of job, the same kind of patient panel, the same EMR headaches. On paper though, you cannot tell these two apart. But the 9:00 at night, it's completely different. The first one is charting every night during their pajamas most likely. The notes, the inbox, the letters, every single task crosses their desk. And every single task is done by them personally. I don't think anything wrong with it unless I mentioned it because that's how we were trained to do, right? If you want it done your right, you got to do it yourself. That's what we're always told. But the second one, which have a 9:00 p.m., they've been finished for a few hours. They're with their family. They're watching Netflix, they're playing with their kids. It's the same job, the same panel, but the first draft of everything, letters, the summaries, the routine replies, that gets handed off. They review, they don't write. And here's the kicker, with the time they got back, they're not just relaxing. In addition to our family, they're building a side gig, you know, while the first one is still wondering if they could ever have a side gig. Again, same degree, same boards, basically the same type of employer. One is not smarter than the other, but what it is the first one is definitely working harder. The other one is working smarter. And the difference is one of them has a chief of staff and the other one is the chief of staff. And I'm going to tell you something that, you know, nobody handed doc number two anything. They just decided that their evenings were worth five minutes to set up. Okay? So, the question is whether this works. Isn't why this works. The question is what to hand off first and how. And that's exactly what I want to give you right now.

Here's the system. I'm calling it the five-minute protocol because it literally takes about five minutes. And the first time you run it, it's going to pay you back the same day. So, three steps, you pick the task, you run the prompt, you review it like an attending, and that's it. Let me walk you through three real examples from start to finish.

Explain when to explain it again later. You know this one. A patient needs their condition explained or their new medication or their pre-op instructions, and you've explained it a thousand times, but it still takes you 15 minutes to write it well because you want to write. So, here's what you do. You open up your AI. Could be Claude, ChatGPT, it doesn't matter. And you give it a job description, not a magic phrase, a job description. Something like "You are writing patient education material for me. Write it at an eighth-grade reading level. Warm, but be direct. Explain what this this condition is, what the treatment does, and the three things the patient needs to do this week. I don't want you to have any patient names, no identifying details. I'll add the specifics myself." And listen, a good prompt isn't a magic phrase, it's a job description. The same way you brief a new hire. Who are you? What do I need? What's the format? What are the rules? And 30 seconds later, you've got a draft. Is it going to be perfect? No. It's a first draft from a very fast intern. You spend 60 seconds reviewing it, you're the attending, it's the intern, you fix the two things it got wrong, and then you're done. And then 15 minutes is now just became 2 minutes.

Example number two, the weekly CEO review. I love this. This one really changed how I run my week. And I'm still surprised nobody really does it, at least physicians don't do it. So, once a week, I usually do it on Sunday morning, you paste in your numbers. It could be, if you have your own practice, your practice dashboard, could be your side business stats, could honestly just be your to-do list and your calendar. And the prompt is, "You're my chief of staff. Review this. Tell me three things that matter most this week, the one thing that looks off, and then ask me three questions a good chief of staff would ask." Again, I'm going to say this again cuz this is gold, guys. "Tell me the three things that matter most this week, the one thing that looks off, and then ask me three questions a good chief of staff would ask." Now, this last part where again, this is the secret. You're not asking it for answers. You're asking it for questions. And I'm telling you the questions are good. You know, why is this number down 2 weeks in a row? You said this project was a priority. Why is there no time block for it? Right? That's the stuff a great chief of staff does. It makes you think like the CEO of your own career for 5 minutes a week. Most physicians never do that, not once.

Okay? Then number three, the delegation filter. And this one's the simplest and it probably is the most powerful. Take your task list for the week, all of it, that whole ugly brain dump list, paste it in. And the prompt is this, sort this list into three buckets. Number one, things only a physician can do or only you can do. Number two, things you can draft and I can review. And number three, things that shouldn't be done at all. I want you to be honest with me and I want you to be ruthless. And the first time you run it, it's probably really uncomfortable because bucket one, the only a physician bucket, is smaller than you want it to be. You'll be surprised, it's a lot smaller. But here's the reframe. The 5-minute protocol isn't about doing things faster. It's about not being the one doing them. Speed is what a tool gives you. Time back is what a chief of staff gives you. And those aren't the same thing.

One rule that I want you to never skip again, and I've talked about this still. Don't put patient identifiers and they never go into a general AI tool, ever. Don't put any names, date of birth, no records, none of it, okay? I don't want you to get trouble for health privacy. And the good news is you really don't need it. Everything I just showed you worked on de-identified and administrative work. And that's where your 5 hours are hiding anyway, the letters, the summaries, the planning, the emails. Keep the protected stuff in your protected systems. But hand everything else to your chief of staff. Just a simple rule, and there really shouldn't be no exceptions, okay?

So, look, everything I walked you through, I've already written down for you, actually, word for word. It's called the Physician's AI Chief of Staff Kit. I'm going to give you the starter guide, the exact prompts, the ones I just read to you, plus more, and a swipe file, so you're never starting at a blank box wondering what to type. So, it's free. All you got to go to is thelounge.beehiiv.com, the lounge.beehiiv, and that's b e e h i i v.com, and click send me the kit, and it's in your inbox in about a minute or two. That's it. thelounge.beehiiv.com. All right, let's go back to the show.

Now, I know some of you are still sitting there, maybe you've got your arms crossed. So, let me take the big three head-on. First off, I I've heard all the excuses. I'm not technical. You don't need to be. If you can write a text message, you can do this. The protocol is simple. Just copy, paste, and review. There's no code, there's no setup. You don't need an IT department. The prompts are already written. That's the whole point of the kit. Number two, the AI can get things wrong. Yeah, it does. You know who else can get things wrong? A first-year resident in July, and you still let them write notes because you review everything before it counts. Same deal here. It's the intern. You're the attending. The review step isn't a flaw in the system, it is the system. And then, I don't have time to learn one more thing. It's 5 minutes. It's in the name of the 5-minute protocol. You know, make a deal. Run one prompt this week, just one. The patient letter, the CEO review, whichever one hits home. If it doesn't pay for itself the same day, email me and tell me. I read every single one, okay? You can contact me over at bootstrapmd.com.

Now, let me zoom out for a second before we wrap this up. This show exists for one reason. I believe physicians deserve income and a life that doesn't depend on seeing one more patient. That's it. That's the whole mission. And here's why today's episode matters more than it might seem. Every non-clinical thing you might be building, be it a consulting practice, your own online course and newsletter, a business, every one of them dies on the same hill. I don't have time. Well, the chief of staff skill is how you get the time. It's not the destination, it's the fuel. Once you get 5 hours back, you can build anything. But if you stay buried, you can't build anything. It really is that simple. So, one more time because I want you to actually do this. I gave you this kit for free at thelounge.beehiiv.com. Click send me the kit and I want you to run one prompt this week. And if you're already getting the lounge, our newsletter, it comes with this when you sign up. Do me a favor, share with two or three colleagues who are still typing this everything themselves at 9:00 at night. I know you know exactly who you are. When three of them actually join your link, you automatically get the extended pack where you get 27 prompts instead of five. It's my way of saying thanks for spreading the word. All righty, guys. I want you to go get your 5 hours back and I'd love to see you back next week and hear what you've done. Remember, guys, you're going to have your ins and outs, your ups and downs as a physician entrepreneur. Do something a little each day to get you closer to your goals and keep moving forward.