The real limit on patient follow-up is not care but capacity, and closing that gap means partnering rather than trying to do it all yourself.
John Chinegwundoh has spent more than two decades in private practice as a respiratory physician. He sees around 1,500 patients a year, and the caseload he carries in his head keeps climbing. In this conversation with Jared, he describes the quiet inefficiency every clinic owner recognises: the white space in the diary, the patients who cannot get a slot one week and the empty afternoons the next, and the ones who cancel, mean to rebook, and simply forget.
His experienced PA keeps the practice running, but she cannot be replicated five times over. So the follow-up that matters most, checking in on a patient with asthma before the spring pollen arrives, or flagging new tests to someone seen years ago, tends to fall away. John's point is not that clinicians stop caring. It is that good intentions run into a hard ceiling of hours and capacity, and most patients only act once symptoms return.
The back half of the conversation turns to what changes the maths. John has adopted AI scribes and still reads every letter as the final arbiter of accuracy. He talks about a more competitive private market where trust and visibility decide who patients choose, about patients who now prefer a WhatsApp reply to an email, and about why he expects to need a tech partner as much as a PA. His closing thought: the clinicians who pull ahead are the curious ones who know their own limits and choose carefully who they lean on.
“The people who are achieving the most are those that are aware of their own limitations. But most importantly, they're the people who are the most curious.”— John Chinegwundoh
Coherent gives private clinics one patient relationship engine, recovering revenue lost at enquiry, recall and billing.