The Practice Gap
The Practice Gap
#37 Using AI to Save Time and Improve Practice Efficiency with Anders Kvarme
Do you ever feel like the administrative side of running a practice takes up way too much of your time? In this episode of The Practice Gap, I sit down with Anders Kvarme, an osteopath, dietitian, and clinic leader, to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) can help healthcare practitioners become more efficient and free up time for what truly matters—connecting with patients.
We break down simple, practical ways to start using AI tools like ChatGPT to handle tasks such as writing reports, cleaning up patient notes, and improving communication with doctors and clients. Anders shares how embracing AI has helped him improve both the quality of his documentation and the time he spends on patient care.
Whether you’re tech-savvy or totally new to AI, this episode will inspire you to start small and discover how AI can make your work easier and more enjoyable. From learning how to use ChatGPT for fast, professional email responses to exploring tools like TextExpander, we offer actionable tips to help you save time, reduce mental load, and focus on what you do best—helping people.
Key Takeaways:
- How AI can help reduce procrastination and lower the mental barrier of writing reports and documentation.
- Why giving AI the right context (a good “prompt”) leads to better results.
- Step-by-step tips on using ChatGPT to clean up your consultation notes quickly and professionally.
- Introduction to TextExpander for automating repetitive tasks and boosting efficiency even further.
- How improving documentation and communication can lead to better patient care—and even increased income.
Tune in to learn how you can start integrating AI into your daily workflow and transform your practice for the better!
Thank you for listening! If you like what you hear, please share it with someone that you think might find value in this episode. If you enjoy this podcast, please take a moment to rate us on Apple Podcasts or where you listen to us. Your feedback helps us improve and reach more listeners. Thank you!
Kind regards,
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen, DC, MSc
follow on instagram
or visit homepage
Hi and welcome to the Practice Gap, the podcast for closing the gap between the practice you have and the one that you want. I'm Elisabeth, a chiropractor, a business owner, coach and entrepreneur, on a mission to help you move from frustration and overwhelm to clarity, focus and joy in practice. Hi and welcome to the studio, anders Kvarma.
Anders Kvarme:Thank you.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:I've been very excited about this episode Me too.
Anders Kvarme:Thanks for having me. It's my first time in a podcast, so I'm a bit excited.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:Welcome. Yes, Anders works as an osteopath and he's also a dietitian. Dietitian. Thank you also a dietician. Thank you, but the reason he's on here today is we are going to talk about AI. But before we do that, would you please tell the audience a little bit about yourself.
Anders Kvarme:Yes, as you said, I'm an osteopath. It's sort of my hobby, so I've never felt I have a proper work. It's just my hobby and lifestyle all mixed up together. So I feel very excited about going to work every day. I cannot fully difference between my work and my private life, but I like it, I love it and that's why I'm so into AI too, because when it's your hobby, you want to get better and better. Things are more fun and enjoyable when you approve, improve a little bit each week. So so ai makes me a way better osteopath and a dietician, and a leader too. I'm leader at my clinic, so my goal is always to free up mental space and energy and time to talk to people.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:It's the internet connectedness. Yeah, that's what brings us happiness in general life.
Anders Kvarme:The meetings I have with the people around me is what gives me the most value, both in the turnover from my clients and also with joy and to develop as an osteopath. I cannot sit in front of a computer and read, so so my main goal is to free up space and energy and be more effective and give better quality of the after work, both journal writing when I write to doctors and even texting and mailing with my clients.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:Okay, so just if we stop here a little bit. So if I am a practitioner also a physiotherapist or a chiropractor why I should be a little bit interested in AI on computers? It is because a lot of my colleagues they couldn't care less about computers. They'd want to get away from computers because they want to work on people. That's why they came into these kind of fields. The reason now we we're talking to these people who don't want to, they're computer resistant. The the goal is to be able to spend more valuable time with your patients or clients, or whatever you call them, to use AI to become a better practitioner. Yes, is that? Can we see that that's the goal?
Anders Kvarme:for yeah, yes, that's a good summarization of my mindset on this.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:So can. Is it okay for you that I start with just asking a few questions before we can go in deep dive into all the things we can do? With AI because I've talked to Anish a little bit before and I'm super excited about all the I love that he's a little bit nerdy on this computer stuff and I that's. I adore that because that's so inspiring. First of all, what is AI?
Anders Kvarme:wow, that's a big question. I can give you my not expert opinion about this AI or the. I can. I can, we can rephrase it, because today we are going to talk a little bit about, or the most about, chatgpt, and ChatGPT is called a large language model like Google, which we used a lot before to get information. You need to be very specific on what you are looking for. You cannot write three questions and give it context to Google. You will not get any valuable result from it. But a language model is made by experts feeding the machine with a lot of text, unbelievable amount of text. I think it's close to all text that is written and digitalized in the whole world, in all languages are fed into this algorithm. It is unbelievable, and this is a bit technical. But every letter is converted to a number. So one text is a bit technical, but every letter is converted to a number. So one text is a super long number.
Anders Kvarme:It sort of predicts what to answer you through all that huge amount of numbers. So it's a probability calculation for each number written. So I almost understand it a bit myself. But that's the technical thing. But the reason why I always explain this, it's that this is the fundamental cause that you need to give it as much context as possible so it works well for you.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:So the more context I give, the better it will work for me.
Anders Kvarme:Yes.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:As Elizabeth, yes, as Elizabeth yes.
Anders Kvarme:So for you, for example, you should tell it about your clinic, your special area of expertise, your courses. If you have PDFs on your computer from all previous workshops, Okay so let's stop, okay.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:So if I'm a person now that runs a small clinic I run a small clinic we use me as Aslan Say that I've never used ChatGPT. So I go in, I search, then I go on Google ChatGPT, log in or get a free account or paid account and then I want to start. So, the first thing I should do is kind of tell them tell ChatGPT a little bit about myself. Is that what you're saying?
Anders Kvarme:yes, but you know, if you are a all fresh beginner never used it before yeah, you should go for the low hanging fruit. Okay, can you say that?
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:yeah, low hanging fruit is great, I think that's a great English word.
Anders Kvarme:Yeah, because all of the things I'm working with is quite fancy and a bit techie. It's not super complicated. But to start with real basics, I recommend you just to, if you have an email to answer, for example, to a client or a doctor or a colleague, just ask, because sometimes, after seeing 20 patients, you are super tired and to write is actually a bit of a mental barrier, so I tend to procrastinate a little bit.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:We can do that report tomorrow. It's not that important, I'll just do it tomorrow.
Anders Kvarme:I'm hungry and I want to go home. So then you just write just a few phrases and some short sentences. It doesn't need to be hanging together or make sense, it's just the content you want. And then you can copy the mail and say I want to answer this with this content and see what it gives you, because I think already there four out of five times the mail you get you can just directly copy and paste into the mail.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:So you do a super, super fast draft where you don't think about anything, just okay, the highlights what you need, yes. And then I put into GPT and say like I want to send I'm a chiropractor, I want to send this to a medical doctor and I want a short synopsis of how this patient is doing and my plan.
Anders Kvarme:Yes.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:And then I take control and V and then enter, and enter, yeah, and then it magically gives me a good answer.
Anders Kvarme:Yes, yeah, it's unbelievable. And if you don't like the answer you get? Sometimes I find the chat GPT to be a bit formal and a bit too polite. We are not so polite in Norway, so I tend to be a bit low-key. When I write to my patients, for example, then I ask it to rephrase and be a bit less formal. Yeah, yeah, so then it will do that, and this takes just three seconds for it to rewrite it.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:And then for me, as a warm person warm person, I can also. Can you write this in a warmer, more light tone?
Anders Kvarme:yes, yes, yeah, yeah, it's perfect, you can everything you can imagine. You can just type it in and see what it gives you don't, so play with it first.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:Yeah, play with it.
Anders Kvarme:don't think that you have to be this picture perfect and have taken a course on this and so on to start Just start using it, because there are so many low-hanging fruits there.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:Okay, I want to save time and one of the things that I know everyone struggles with is the amount of time to write good journals and documentation. And I know that in some of the computer games, games, computer programs well, it's the kind of games if you love your job, the computer programs they have standard phrases, forms that you can just fill in, so at least that's some help.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:Could you tell the audience how, like if you have a person coming in the first time, it's your first visit to me and I sit and write down really fast as I talk. The sentences are bad, things are missing, yeah, so what's the fastest way for me to make this into a really nice documentation? That's in the journal.
Anders Kvarme:Yeah, I can tell you my routine. Okay, because this context you give it, the more context you give and instructions you give, the more perfect it will be. This is called a prompt. I never use that terminology when I talk to people. It's more of a description. Let's call it a description, so the description needs to be as precise as possible. Right To get the journal super tight so you can just copy and paste it directly into your journal system. You should actually tell it each time that you are a chiropractor, you're authorized, professional and you're working at this clinic, you're authorized professional Professional.
Anders Kvarme:Yeah, and you're working at this clinic and you're professional this and that and tell it. This is a first time visit. I use this the most at the first time visit.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:So that's your writing, yeah.
Anders Kvarme:Yeah, so I write a lot in my draft. When they talk. I write all the time.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:I'm a super write. Do you write in the journal or write in another place?
Anders Kvarme:Directly to the journal. I'm actually looking at my patient. I learn to type without looking at the screen. Touch, touch, yeah, that's a skill which sounds super difficult. If you practice with a game a few weeks, you will master it.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:For sure, if I'm a therapist and I've never used, I never learned touch. What's the best way? Where can I easiest learn it?
Anders Kvarme:on top of mine. I don't have the name of the game there is a game also there.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:Okay, so there's actually a game that I can.
Anders Kvarme:Oh, that's cool so then, then then you, they tell you how to place your fingers on the tablature, yeah on the tablature. And then and then you, you train yourself to only look at the screen, not at the tablature, and then you will see a picture of your pinky moving upright then you get that letter and that letter and that's kind of like learning playing the piano. Yes, yes, with the perfect conversation, actually, and this goes way faster than you think because you only already have the tablature in your mind already okay, so how long?
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:let's really motivate everyone out there all our listeners to really learn touch, because that will make your life so much easier. How long does it if I've never, never used it? How long does it take for me to learn touch?
Anders Kvarme:okay, this is my prediction.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:If you are a super, I mean they're super beginner, yeah but everyone has written on a tablature before yes, I mean, we have really. I mean, all our listeners are super superstars.
Anders Kvarme:Yeah, of course, yeah, of course, yeah all our mensa members I will say maybe if you practice 15 minutes each day. So if you block out in your patient list in your schedule, just one slot each day for one to two weeks, and after that you just make up your mind. You never go back to the old method. You force yourself to do it then you will be a super expert I I really mean it in like two, three months very cool.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:Yeah, I mean everyone out there. If you do this, just this one thing, you will save so much time so much, I also get very tired of the screen.
Anders Kvarme:Yeah, so I I like to just close my eyes sometimes and just write. After three months, or maybe two months, you will be able to write as fast as you think. Then you can just think about what you will write in the journal and it's on the computer. It's just automatically happening.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:So to go back to this patient, you are sitting there. You're writing about the eight minutes it takes for the first consultation and then what do you do?
Anders Kvarme:I basically I turn myself with my full body on to my patient, so my legs, my arms, my head is focused on the patient.
Anders Kvarme:I have the tablature in front of me, which I don't look at and I write every word they say without interpreting anything. And the good thing with Chachipiti is when it cleans up your note, it doesn't matter if you have any typing mistakes. So I have learned to just don't think about it. It's actually bad when I write without Chachipiti, because I make more typing errors now because I'm used to just go ahead.
Anders Kvarme:Pros and cons with everything. Just write everything they say, and also my question too. And I have been so fast with this and done this for Because I'm used to just go ahead Pros and cons with everything, just write everything they say, and also my question too. And I have been so fast with this and done this for a while. If I am thinking about things to ask them for, I also write this in as they speak, in between, when they think, and so on. I always let my patient talk until they are finished. For most someone can talk for an hour. Then I interrupt them. I like everyone to finish off and when they see I type, they always look down a bit and, oh my God, what is this? Someone comments on it and I just I'm just writing everything you say.
Anders Kvarme:I'm really interested in getting all the details from your story, so I can really think about this also after you have left my office. That's a nice one story, so I can really think about this also after you have left my office. Yes, because, because the the magic with that is is the brain cannot take in all the information at once. The brain is constructed like when you hear something, you want to put some meaning into it. If I get this tunnel vision on, this must be a protrusion in the lumbar region. I'm not thinking about a piriformis syndrome or something like that. After the session is done, when I clean up the note with Chachi Petit we are jumping a bit now in Chachi Petit when you ask it to do something, it's actually a chat. That means when Chachi Petit has cleansed your note.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:Okay, so you're done with the first-line consultation and you're copying all the things in your journal. You have another place on the computer where you have ChatGPT open and then you copy it into the program. What do you ask ChatGPT to do?
Anders Kvarme:When you are a beginner you type in just the draft and then you paste it into ChatGPT. Just a little mark there. If they say something which can identify them, you just drag that text to the bottom of the draft and don't put it into.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:ChatGPT, so anything that's personal.
Anders Kvarme:If they say I'm the boss at Beckenham Barn it's quite easy to find out who it is.
Anders Kvarme:That's a function you have today. You can just mark that sentence and just directly drag it to the bottom and it will just clip it out and drag it to the bottom automatically. I think that's quite standard in every program now. So I'm just if I know there is something there, because when I write you will remember that, okay, here there's something I should take out. And when I've done that, I you take all the draft and you can in the beginning just type it in and say clean up this note and see what it dark with as simple as that. When, when I started cleaning up my journal note, it was actually the very first thing I used GPT, for I started like that. In the beginning I had a word document where I typed in my description, so I don't need to every time type the full description.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:Yeah, so like I'm Elisabeth, I work at Ekden Barn. I'm a chiropractor this is for my notes for a chiropractic clinic or something like that. Yeah.
Anders Kvarme:I also have lists and clean up the note after this rule and column and then I have punctual things as a list down below that. So every time Chachi Petit does a mistake when it cleans up my note.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:I update that list, okay, so. So what would? What would a mistake be?
Anders Kvarme:in the beginning it was as simple as I. I don't. I never write out left, I just write L, l and lumbar LX. I have this sort of short.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:Yeah, abbreviation.
Anders Kvarme:Abbreviation yeah, then I just updated the list with all my abbreviation. So L stands for left, r stands for right, lx is lumbar, tx is torical.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:So then I could do like PB pelvic bench yes, kc knee Chest high, low, high, low yeah yeah, yeah. And then I have so every time I so I make my list Word document and then I, just before I put the notes in my draft I copy that on top and then the colon, and then I just copy in in my draft and then just enter.
Anders Kvarme:Yeah, so, and then when you clean up the journal note, you copy the description on top and the draft on the bottom and then you type it in and then it will clean it up in under 10 seconds Each time. It makes it just do a mistake once, because when you update the description it will never do that mistake again.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:So it keeps learning.
Anders Kvarme:Yes, the next level from this description is I use now a program which is called Text Expander. Text Expander Maybe we can put the link in the description of the episode.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:Yes, I will do that.
Anders Kvarme:Because what Text Expander does is it makes the workflow a bit simpler. You can use word to begin with. You don't need fancy, nerdy software in the beginning, but the the 15th time you you copy and paste from the word. You know that, okay, I will continue to do this. This is very good. So whatExpander does is that you put the description into TextExpander and you make abbreviation there to trigger TextExpander to replace your abbreviation with your actual description. I, my short is is set clean journal and when I type space this trigger text expander, then it takes out the abbreviation and it put in this super long description because the okay, let's stop it.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:And since this I'm completely new with and I will tell the audience how new I downloaded it yesterday I signed up, yeah so I opened it twice and it looked a little complicated yeah okay, I have not spent much time. I just heard you talk about a little bit and I tried to figure it out, so could you just explain one more time?
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:I did see how awesome it was because I did see you use it but it's a little scary when you open it because it was like oh, this looks very different. Yeah, so just could you in one more time, very lightly explain how this will make my life easier if I actually learn this? So with chachi pt as we are discussing now, I'm okay with that and I'm okay with words. So that's we're doing, we're gonna.
Anders Kvarme:Let's connect this to be able to faster paste in the description into chachi pt.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:You use text expander honestly that's kind of instead of the word document.
Anders Kvarme:Yes, okay, yeah yeah, so it replaces that and makes it quicker.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:So then in TextExpander it's open next to my journal in the computer. What do I do?
Anders Kvarme:In the beginning. You need to have TextExpander at the side of ChatGPT because when it makes a mistake you have to correct it in TextExpander.
Anders Kvarme:So instead of now, I'm correcting it so things better and not yes in chat gpt so you can sometimes, if it's a simple mistake sometimes the most common error it makes it says he instead of she. Yeah, when text expander chat gpt is writing to you, you can. You can just speed read and if you see it, it says he and it's she. I just type she, enter and it starts over using she. Ah, okay.
Anders Kvarme:So you can just correct it with just one word. It almost always understands what I mean. But when there is something fundamental it does as a mistake. You correct the description. You couldn't do that in Word or in TextExpander, because then the next time you call for the abbreviation, then the updated description will be pasted into ChatGipti. Okay.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:I know this might be a little complicated when you talk about this, but we're going to round up this little episode now, and then we're going to make one more episode after the little coffee break. And then I'm thinking take our messages, get into chat GPT, start playing with it.
Anders Kvarme:Yeah.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:And start. If you haven't used it, do it at least on the first consultation to clean up your notes and you will fall in love with it. And then it's super easy also to write reports. It just makes it super nice and easy. And then suddenly you become proud of sending them off, because I know that a lot of my colleagues and friends who are colleagues they have this little barrier towards sending reports because they feel that their language isn't good enough and they don't know exactly how to do it. So if we feed some good reports into chat, gpt, they will easily then learn how I like it and then it's gonna make it easy, I'm gonna save time, I will send more reports and that's good communication marketing for myself, yeah, and hopefully I will have a much practice yes and the good thing, I'm saving time and earning more money.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:Yeah, basically.
Anders Kvarme:So learn chat, gft and then start playing with text expander and the very best is, when the insurance company want an epic crisis or a summarization, they actually pay a report. They actually pay you for this. So before you need to cut and paste and make it properly, when you have a perfect description, you make like 800 kroners or what it is in 10 seconds, like that yeah, so well, that's a good, good charging rate, yes perfect.
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen:thank you and Anders for giving us a little summary. We are at the starting point how to use AI in your clinic and the next episode we're going to go into even more fun all the possibilities you have Does that sound good. Yes, perfect, thank you.