A physician can be very good at caring for patients and still spend too much of the day dealing with the business of running a practice. There are schedules to manage, payments to follow up on, staff questions to answer, vendors to evaluate, and patients trying to find accurate information about the practice. That is where we want to focus the conversation about AI. Clearly AI is being adopted into clinical practices at a rapid pace. However, usage of AI to optimize business processes in small to medium-sized medical practices is lacking and these types of practices are those that would benefit the most from having general purpose and capable AI tools deployed in a safe and HIPAA-compliant manner.
A general-purpose AI tool such as Claude can help an owner or practice manager work through information, prepare useful outputs, and make better-informed business decisions. You give it the relevant material, tell it what you are trying to accomplish, and check the result. The opportunity is to reduce recurring work and make it easier to act on information the practice already has. HIPAA compliance also gives pause to many practices as the practice leaders may not be aware of the many of the general-purpose AI solutions offer HIPAA compliant solutions. However, there are very specific steps to deploying such solutions which we will cover in a later blog post.
A properly deployed HIPAA-compliant AI tool can be forced multiplier for productivity and relieve practice leaders from the drudgery of many aspects of running a practice other than caring for patients.
1. Knowledge base
Every practice has information that its team needs to do the job well: policies, procedures, payer instructions, service information, and the experience of people who have worked there for years. Much of that knowledge sits in different folders, email threads, or someone’s head. The result is repeated questions and a few experienced people being interrupted throughout the day.
A general-purpose AI tool can make that knowledge accessible and useful. Staff can ask questions in ordinary language and get answers from the practice’s documents and procedures. The same material can be used to prepare onboarding guides, checklists, and training exercises.
- Help a new employee understand the steps for handling a referral.
- Explain the practice’s process for following up on an outstanding payment.
- Find the applicable policy and identify when an issue needs to be escalated.
- Turn an experienced employee’s description of a process into a usable procedure.
The value extends beyond finding a document. It helps the team work consistently and makes the practice less dependent on the owner being available to answer every question.
This is already happening. In a published Google interview, the owner of Family Vision Care of Ponca City describes using Gemini to edit and condense the practice’s policy manual for her staff.
2. Productivity and analytics
Practice leaders need to get work done and understand what is happening in the business. AI can help with both. It can prepare a management report, organize meeting notes into actions, analyze a spreadsheet, compare alternatives, or bring information from several sources together to answer a business question.
For example, an owner may see fewer completed visits and assume the practice needs more marketing. But appointment availability, cancellations, referral processing, and follow-up all affect that result. Bringing those reports together can help the manager understand where the problem sits and what to investigate.
- Prepare a weekly business review from appointment, referral, staffing, and collections reports.
- Analyze cancellation patterns or a growing backlog of referrals.
- Compare the implications of changing office hours or adding staff coverage.
- Turn a management meeting into a clear set of decisions, responsibilities, and next steps.
This gives practice leaders access to analytical capabilities that previously required dedicated staff or outside support. They can explore the numbers, ask follow-up questions, compare options, and develop a clearer understanding of what is driving the business.
Oxford University Hospitals provides a practical example of this broader use of general-purpose AI. Its published Copilot account describes management reporting, compiling email information into timelines, and a finance leader creating a script to improve spreadsheet analysis.
3. Creating small tools that remove recurring administrative friction
Practices often have a particular task that their existing systems do not handle well. Someone maintains a spreadsheet, retypes information, checks a list manually, or creates the same report every week. The task may be too small to justify another software system, but large enough to consume time repeatedly.
General-purpose AI can help create a small tool around that need. The owner or manager describes the process, the information involved, and the result they want. An AI tool with appropriate coding capabilities can help turn that description into a working spreadsheet, script, or internal application.
- A referral tracker that shows what is outstanding and the next action.
- A credential-renewal tracker with the relevant dates and responsibilities.
- A calculator for comparing staffing or appointment-capacity scenarios.
- A tool that converts a recurring export into the management report the practice needs.
MGMA has reported medical groups building their own tools for dashboards, scheduling, inventory, policies, and staff tracking. The opportunity is to address the specific gaps that make work harder in a particular practice.
These tools can be tailored to how the practice works, giving staff a more efficient way to handle tasks that have long depended on manual effort. A recurring frustration becomes an opportunity to build something useful.
4. Marketing and growth
Some practices actively market. Others rely mainly on referrals. Both need to understand who they want to reach, how those people find them, and whether the practice’s public information helps them take the next step.
AI can support that work from research through execution. It can work with information about the practice’s services, locations, availability, and goals to develop a more focused approach to reaching patients and referral sources.
- Research potential referral organizations and the professional roles that would be relevant to a relationship.
- Compare the website and public listings for missing, inconsistent, or outdated information.
- Develop service pages, referral guides, social posts, and email content grounded in what the practice actually provides.
- Analyze marketing results alongside inquiries, bookings, and completed appointments to understand what deserves further investment.
Finding the right people is part of the work. AI can research relevant referral organizations, identify the people responsible for those relationships, and help develop a focused outreach approach. This gives the practice a way to connect its growth goals with specific people, organizations, and opportunities.
The Family Vision Care owner also describes using Gemini to create social media graphics. That is an accessible starting point, but the broader business opportunity is to connect the practice’s goals, its message, the people it wants to reach, and the results of its efforts.
5. Financial and revenue management
Owners need to understand what the practice is earning, what it is spending, and where money requires attention. The relevant information is often spread across billing reports, accounting records, payer agreements, vendor invoices, and follow-up notes.
AI can help organize and interpret that information, prepare comparisons, and identify questions for the billing team, accountant, or owner to investigate.
- Review outstanding balances and denial categories to organize follow-up.
- Compare expenses across periods and identify changes that need explanation.
- Compare vendor proposals, recurring charges, and renewal terms.
- Extract obligations and deadlines from payer agreements and compare amendments with the prior version.
AI can also help compare payment information with fee schedules, organize differences for investigation, and bring together the information the billing team needs for follow-up. This connects the practice’s financial information with the work needed to resolve outstanding items.
For practices participating in value-based arrangements, AI can help organize contractual requirements, reporting dates, and payment reconciliations, giving the team a clearer view of the activities tied to those payments.
These uses give the owner greater visibility into the financial side of the practice and help the team focus on collecting outstanding payments, understanding costs, and reducing the time spent on financial administration.
Putting the five areas to work
These areas reinforce each other. The knowledge base gives the team consistent information. Productivity and analytics help people understand the business. Small tools remove recurring obstacles. Marketing supports growth, while financial and revenue management help the practice understand the value it is creating and retaining.
The opportunity here is to give practice leaders and their teams more capability to run the business well, while reducing the recurring administrative work that consumes their time. In the next article, we will walk through deploying Claude with the ownership, HIPAA safeguards, usage controls, and training needed to support that work.
About the author
Ahsan Jameel, founder of Decision Current, is a seasoned technology practitioner dedicated to helping businesses run better through the effective use of AI. His work focuses on helping business owners and their teams improve productivity, make better decisions, and reduce administrative work through practical AI tools and solutions.
