Automate Medical Practice Overhead (and Reclaim Your Brain)

What doesn’t sound sexy but is irresistible once you try it? When you automate medical practice overhead.

Set it, forget it and kick it off the mental task ticker tape is genuinely one of the most satisfying feelings.

How many of these sound familiar?

• “License renewal is due this weekend – did I pay that?”
• “WHERE did all the pens go? I have to order more after clinic.”
• “The car needs an oil change. I keep forgetting to call.”

Multiply that by every subscription, fee, supply order and recurring task on your running mental list. The number is staggering. And not-so-quietly sucking your energy.

For the purpose of this post, “overhead” includes anything related to practicing medicine – office expenses, getting to and from work, medical society dues, phone bills, you name it. The goal? Automate your medical practice so as many of those tasks are off your plate entirely (gold medal 🥇) or at least off your mental to-do list (silver still wins 🥈).

And before any guilt or “I should be able to do it” creeps in: you (probably) don’t expect the CEO of Apple to be ordering printer paper. Even though he could. So why are you?

Pre-Authorized Payments: The Easy Win

The fastest place to start: recurring payments.

Most suppliers, vendors and service providers offer automatic billing. Bingo. Medical society dues, phone bills, office supply subscriptions – all of it can run in the background without a single brain cell spent on it.

Take it one step further: many suppliers let you set automatic reorder schedules, just like Amazon’s Subscribe & Save. Running low on gloves or printer paper every six weeks? Schedule it. Done. If you’re not sure on timelines, talk to your admin. They are the boss after all.

Same idea applies to recurring service appointments. A recent fav and big win was no longer thinking about scheduling my oil and tire changes.

I no longer book my own oil changes or tire rotations. I told the dealership which months I want the tires swapped, how often the oil needs changing and which day of the week works best for drop-off. They schedule everything and send me a text reminder. That’s it. They get my guaranteed business; I eliminate a task. Everyone wins. (Speaking of win-wins—here’s how to find them in your practice too.)

Off-load It with a Playbook

For anything that still needs some human input, can an employee handle it?

If handing off spending authority feels uncomfortable (same), the fix can be simple (and reassuring): give them a Playbook. Think of it like writing orders for a patient when you won’t be around and don’t want to be called at 3am – “If A happens, do B. If Y happens, do Z.” Clear guidelines = no surprises.

A Playbook is essentially a written guide (Standard Operating Procedure in the business world) that spells out what, when, how much and where. Your payment details can be pre-saved, or included in the Playbook if you’re comfortable.

With clear Playbooks, tasks get done exactly how you want – but you don’t need to be the one doing it. (Dan Martell’s Buy Back Your Time digs into this brilliantly.)

This is being effective, not just efficient and it’s a game changer.

Set Reminders for Everything Else

Some tasks genuinely need to stay on your list. But that doesn’t mean you have to spend time and energy remembering them yourself.

Quarterly taxes. License renewals. Insurance renewals. Your admin’s birthday in August and Administrator Appreciation Day in April.

Set. A. Reminder. Pick an app – any app – and outsource the remembering to your phone. (Admittedly, I am still working on this one too.)

But man, getting these off your mental to-do list frees up real head space and energy. And that shows up at work and at home.

Automating your medical practice overhead is one of the sexiest, most freeing things you can do.

And you can start small. One task at a time that ripples into real differences.

You’re already keeping mental tabs open on hundreds of things without even realizing it. Not all of them can be handed off – but what if a big chunk of them could be? How much time and mental bandwidth would that free up?

What tasks have you successfully gotten off your list and how did you do it? Drop it in the comments. We’d love to share your wins.