The book
The Independent Clinician's Toolkit
Building the practice you actually want
An Australian guide to digital health for independent practice — for GPs, allied health practitioners, specialists and dentists whose practice is, in some meaningful sense, theirs.
The opening
It's 5:23 on a Tuesday afternoon.
The clinician — call her Sarah — has just finished with her last patient. Her notes are written. They were written during the consultation, prompted by a template that knew what she usually wanted to capture. The billing is done; the system suggested the item number and she confirmed it with a click. The claim is submitted.
She closes her last record, looks around her consulting room for a moment, and packs up. By 5:45 she's in her car. She'll be home in time to make dinner with her family. She won't open her laptop tonight.
This is what the book is about: not what you're escaping, but what you're building.
Eighteen months earlier none of it was true. Sarah was still at her desk at 6:47, toggling between three browser tabs, with unopened letters from the Department of Health on the corner of the desk. She was, on most days, helping a spreadsheet. What changed wasn't a single tool. It was an approach.
Why this book is different
No burnout statistics in the first chapter.
Most writing aimed at independent clinicians opens with the percentages — the burnout rates, the revenue leakage, the compliance risk. You're meant to feel the weight of it and then, exhausted by the diagnosis, accept whatever the author is selling as relief.
Fear is a fast motivator and a poor architect. It builds defences, not destinations. The data is in this book, because it's real and it matters — but it appears as context, not as motivation. Your motivation is the practice itself, the one you imagined when you decided to go independent.
What's inside
Part I — The practice you're building. A day inside a practice that works, and the five foundations that make it possible.
Part II — Building the foundations. A connected practice. The defensible record. The frictionless patient journey. Charging what you're worth. The confident biller. Care beyond the consulting room. A practice patients choose.
Part III — Protecting what you've built. The augmented practice — where AI genuinely helps and where it becomes a regulated medical device. Earned trust — cybersecurity in plain language, and where practices actually fail.
Part IV — Putting it into practice. A sixteen-week implementation that doesn't break anything, and the strategic layer that makes a practice outlast its founder.
Who it's for
GPs in solo or small-group practice. Specialists running their own rooms. Allied health practitioners — physiotherapists, psychologists, dietitians, podiatrists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, exercise physiologists, audiologists. Dentists. Anyone whose practice is theirs.
Who it isn't for
It won't tell you how to practise. I'm not a clinician, and the book says so on page one. If you're looking for clinical guidance, this isn't it. It's about everything that surrounds the clinical work — and how, arranged properly, that gives you the time and headspace to do the clinical work itself.
On tools
Independent clinicians are constantly being sold methods as identities. “We are a Best Practice clinic.” “We use HotDoc.” “We are certified in the Essential Eight.” These are not identities. They are tools. Some are excellent. None of them is the practice.
This book won't convert you to a brand. It shows you the categories of tools available and helps you develop the judgement to choose between them. I resell nothing and have no commercial relationship with any platform named in it.
Start with Chapter 1
“An ordinary Tuesday” — a full chapter, free. It's the one that describes the practice you're building, and it's the fairest test of whether the rest of the book is for you.
⚠ Email service not connected yet — see README, “Wiring the forms”.
Where to buy
Get the book
- Paperback and Kindle — available now on Amazon.
Booktopia, bookshops and libraries — coming shortly. Join the list below and I will let you know when it lands.
The practice you want and the practice you have are not separated by a complete rebuild. They are separated, in each of the areas this book describes, by a small number of well-chosen changes, made deliberately. Not the rebuild. The adjustment.
Occasional notes on digital health that's actually working
A few times a year, when I have something useful to say. No sequences, no funnels, no “quick question, Simon?” emails.
⚠ Email service not connected yet — see README, “Wiring the forms”.