For years, everyone's been trying to define what makes the best doctor.
Insurance companies have their definition. Hospital administrators have theirs. Tech startups have a completely different one. And somehow, none of them involve actually asking patients or doctors.
Let's trace how we got here.
The Evolution of "Best Doctor"
Traditionally, "best doctor" meant where you trained or what journals published your research. Simple enough.
Then EHRs arrived, and everything became about metrics.
How much can you bill? How many patients can you see in a day? How many minutes per consultation? Healthcare systems introduced RVUs, creating billable classifications for literally everything a doctor does during a visit. Asked a screening question about mental health? That's a code. Discussed smoking cessation? Another code.
Every second evaluated. Every action monetized.
This wasn't just happening in hospital systems. The metrics-driven approach infected private practice too, where third-party insurance providers control reimbursements. These rules determined how much doctors could grow, since earnings were capped by insurance company formulas.
The only way to scale? Increase patient volume. Which meant hiring more clinical and administrative staff. More expense. More complexity. Less focus on actually treating patients.
But wait, it gets better. New models introduced star ratings and "best doctor" classifications for those who met these metrics. Programs like value-based care emerged, pitched as adding value to patients but really focused on optimizing billing through clinical visit data.
Research backs up what doctors already know: physician burnout rates have skyrocketed. Over 60% of physicians report symptoms of burnout, with administrative burden cited as a leading cause. The average physician spends nearly two hours on EHR documentation for every hour of direct patient care.
And patients? They're not happy either. Patient satisfaction scores have declined as wait times increase and face-to-face time with doctors decreases. Patients report feeling rushed, unheard, and frustrated with healthcare systems that seem designed for billing rather than healing.
The Cash Pay Mirage
This isn't just an insurance problem. Cash pay has its own version of dysfunction.
Direct-to-consumer healthcare defines "best doctors" through online reviews, marketplace scores, or whoever danced first on TikTok. We've seen the rise of doctor influencers who became the default "best" in their category not through clinical excellence but through celebrity appeal and designer accessories.
Look at longevity medicine. It's often less about expertise and more about who has the biggest following and the Gucci belt to match.
Now startups are pitching doctor "shopability" as the defining factor. Accessibility plus price transparency supposedly determines who's best. They're trying to create an Amazon-like experience where you hire doctors, call them "the best of the best," and market them to patients.
You can't productize healthcare. Hiring doctors and calling them the best doesn't make them the best. It just means you liked them enough to hire them and now you're doing marketing to get them patients. No different from what doctors do themselves in private practice, except now they work for a startup instead of themselves or a hospital.
The "Top of License" Con
Here's the phrase you've heard for years: doctors should "practice at the top of their license."
Nobody really knows what that means or where it came from. Possibly some investor on stage at a conference in Vegas. Maybe a hospital administrator. Definitely someone who wasn't seeing patients.
How do doctors interpret it? They want us to work more so we can bill more.
Which is exactly what AI tech is being used for right now. Remove administrative bloat so doctors have more time to do more and bill more. It's marketed as "more time to focus on patient care" or "creating access," but the true objective has always been the same: bill more.
AI scribes were pitched to reduce documentation burden. Now their holy grail has expanded to billing integration. Because this is healthcare, and when corporations control it, treating the patient is always secondary to billing.
A Different Definition
At Cline, we want to dig deeper into what "top of license" actually means. Not the corporate definition. The real one.
We think it's what doctors did before EHR technology ever existed in clinical practice. Seeing patients without interference from third-party administrators or insurance companies trying to have a voice in clinical operations just to figure out creative ways to bill for something.
"Top of license" was a marketing statement by people who weren't providing the services. Tech companies ran with it once generative AI launched. That's why we've seen AI scribes, AI receptionists, AI scheduling, and everything else with "AI" slapped on it.
But humor us for a minute. What if we actually thought about helping doctors become the best version of themselves?
What critical skill were they missing during the EHR-enabled era that's 10 times more critical in an AI-first era?
We think it’s the ability to build software.
Not just any software. AI software that's native to the environment where they already spend their time treating and managing patient care.
When Doctors Become Builders
If doctors could suddenly design, build, and deploy their own custom AI software, how would that change what it means to be the best doctor?
What would they build? How would technology change? How would care delivery evolve?
Social post from Dr. Amaro challenging the concept of notes in AI-native environments.
Our CEO, Dr. Mario Amaro, is challenging fundamental assumptions. Like: is note-taking even a requirement anymore?
If visits become multi-modal because doctors can build their own agents that capture speech, video, and images, all of that becomes source material. Similar to how Google's NotebookLM converts sources into separate output products like audio podcasts, chat interfaces, pitch decks, whiteboards, and explainer videos.
Google NotebookLM Product Image
Shouldn't doctors and patients be able to do the exact same?
To prove his point, Dr. Amaro logged into Cline minutes after having this thought. He used his EHR portal as the backend while completely redesigning the frontend interface to look like NotebookLM.
Tweet from Dr. Amaro discussing PortalLM
Built it himself. No developers. No engineers. Just the idea and the platform to make it real.
Demo of what PortalLM - made with one-shot
This is just one example of how doctors could become the best doctors when you add the skillset of AI code development. They control the experience in partnership with their patients. They no longer wait for some tech company or hospital administrator to give them permission on how to use technology.
If they know it will benefit their patients or improve treatment and management, they simply ask Cline to build it.
This Isn't the Future. It's Now.
Doctors working with Cline are using this technology right now to reclaim their autonomy from tech companies and all the other third parties that have spent over 20 years figuring out ways to generate revenue from their clinical services.
We don't know exactly what "the best doctor" is. To be honest, we don't think we're the ones to define it.
We believe that distinction belongs to patients. Not some marketplace. Not some tech startup. And certainly not some insurance company.
What we do know: the best doctors will be the ones who refuse to let others define them. The ones who challenge everything about EHRs, digital health, and care delivery operations. The ones who build technology that works for their patients instead of adapting to technology built for billing departments.
The Real Question
What does it mean to be the best doctor in an AI-first era?
Maybe it means being the doctor who stopped waiting for permission. The doctor who learned to build the tools they actually need. The doctor who designed technology around patient care instead of insurance codes.
The doctor who remembered why they went to medical school in the first place.
The tools exist. The technology is ready. The only question is whether you're ready to stop being defined by metrics and start defining what excellence actually means.
Ready to Challenge Everything?
Cline's EHR-native vibe-coding platform lets you build the technology your practice actually needs. No coding experience required. Just your expertise, your vision, and the ability to finally practice medicine on your own terms.
Because the best doctor isn't defined by RVUs, star ratings, or TikTok followers.
The best doctor is the one who builds what their patients need.