Before you book that specialist, read the file

Today's Tip: Vetting a doctor before you ever see them

I used to think the only way to size up a new doctor was to go to the appointment, sit through it, and see how I felt afterward… That was wrong. By then it's already too late.

Let me explain…

My friend Terry had a referral to a cardiologist last month. New insurance plan, new network, new name on the slip. He did what most of us do. He Googled the name, saw a few star ratings on Healthgrades, shrugged, and showed up.

The appointment went fine. But afterward, out of curiosity, Terry ran the same name through Grok. In two minutes he found out the doctor had been publicly reprimanded by the state medical board four years earlier… had switched hospital systems twice in three years… and had a cluster of patient complaints about rushing visits that never surfaced on the first page of a regular search.

None of that necessarily means "run away." People get second chances, and busy doctors have detractors. But it's the kind of information you'd want before you walk in and decide whether to put your heart in someone's hands.

Terry's not angry at himself. He's just annoyed that nobody told him this was possible… that in the time it takes to brew coffee, you can pull together a picture of a doctor that goes beyond the glossy clinic bio.

Here's the prompt that does it…

Try it with a doctor you're already seeing, as a dry run. You'll get a feel for what the report looks like, and you might even learn something about someone you thought you knew.

Then run it on the next new name a referral slip hands you… before you book the appointment, not after.

Now, I know what you're thinking… "Isn't this a little nosy? Shouldn't I just trust my doctor?"

Trust is earned, not assumed. And the information you're pulling is already public. State medical boards publish disciplinary actions on purpose, so patients can find them. The only new thing here is that Grok can gather it all in two minutes instead of three hours — you're reading the file the state put out for you.

Pull this report once, print it, and tuck it in your appointment folder. Then at the visit, you'll have a quiet confidence that most patients don't have…

And if the report turns up something serious, you have time to ask your referring doctor for a different name — before you've invested a copay and an afternoon.

★ Quick Wins

Skill Builder: Prompt Templates for Specific Tasks

Today's main prompt was long. Six numbered items, specific details, source requirements. That length is not an accident. The best AI prompts for repeat tasks are built like forms, not conversations.

A good prompt template has four parts, always in the same order: who the AI is pretending to be, what context you're giving it, what task you want done, and what format you want the answer in. That's it. Four slots.

Once you have a template that works, save it. Keep it in a Notes app, in a document on your desktop, or printed on an index card next to the computer. You stop re-inventing the prompt every time and start getting consistent results — the same shape, the same depth, every time you run it.

The template works for anything you do more than once — a thank-you note, a long document summary, a report, a bill check. Every repeat task gets its own saved template. Think of it like your coffee order: once you know you want a medium drip with cream, you don't workshop it fresh at the counter.

Here's the four-part template filled in for a sample task — writing a birthday message to a grandchild:

Save three or four of these templates in the first week and you'll notice something — the quality of your AI results goes up, and the time you spend typing goes down. You're building a little library of your own prompts, tailored to the things you actually do.

That's the quiet shift that separates casual AI users from the people who get useful work out of these tools… the templates do the heavy lifting so you don't have to start from scratch every time.