Answered by Noah Watson · Updated 2026-10-15
What should a medical practice automate first?
The repeated admin work with clear rules and no clinical judgement in it: intake routing, appointment follow-up, referral acknowledgements, insurance verification chasing, reporting and content. Clinical decisions stay with the clinician.
Start where the same thing is typed twice
If staff copy the same patient details from an intake form into the practice management system and then into a spreadsheet, that is the first job to automate. It is pure repetition and every copy is a chance for a mistake.
Then the things someone has to notice
Referrals arriving by fax or email, missed-appointment follow-ups, and payer reports assembled by hand each depend on a person remembering. A small workflow that catches them and puts them in front of the right person saves hours a week.
Leave clinical work alone
Automation handles the work around care. Anything that needs judgement about a patient stays with a clinician, and most of the hours a practice loses are in the admin around that work anyway.
Want this set up for your practice? See how I do it.