If you're not in the room, you're on the menu. Physicians ignored insurance, then business executives, then EMRs, and each time woke up to a profession run by people who were not doctors. Augusta Uwah, a hospitalist and physician-AI consultant who has built more than 50 AI tools she uses daily, argues AI is the next one, and this time getting left behind means becoming a figurehead in your own hospital.

⏱️ Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:22 Human first, physician second
0:54 The pattern physicians keep repeating
2:59 If you're not in the room, you're on the menu
4:11 Most physicians can't pass the basics
5:30 The tools keeping rural hospitals from closing
6:29 Nobody understands what she's talking about
7:41 The knowledge gap that leaves you vulnerable
9:17 What leading AI actually looks like
10:36 Why nurses are beating physicians to it
12:39 The people trying to replace doctors
13:47 The first step to catch up
16:21 Take home messages

About this episode:
Augusta Uwah is a hospitalist and physician executive who became a certified AI consultant and now runs a consulting business built around keeping rural hospitals from closing through revenue-cycle AI tools. She wrote a KevinMD article arguing that physician-led AI adoption is essential, and here she makes the case that physicians have a habit of ignoring change until it has already taken over, pointing to how they lost ground to insurers, to business executives in the C-suite, and to EMRs. She warns that AI is moving faster than any technology before it, from generative to agentic to physical AI, while most physicians have not even secured the basic tools they claim to use. The danger, she argues, is not just falling behind but becoming vulnerable to vendors, getting into trouble with HIPAA and compliance, and eventually being reduced to a figurehead who questions their own role. She shares a story of a hospital inviting physician input on AI while the people around her had not even read the announcement, and notes that nurses are adopting faster and reshaping their own profession. She points to early state efforts to let AI stand in for physicians and to wealthy backers trying to build AI that replaces doctors, while insisting the physicians who get ahead will be the most sought-after. She closes with a concrete first step for anyone who only uses ChatGPT casually and wants to catch up. The through-line is simple: get in the room before the decisions are made without you.

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