Did you go to medical school to learn how to juggle your accounts payables and receivables? Did you spend 10 years going to school to figure out how to set up workable collection procedures with your patients and clients? I didn’t think so. Over the years, many doctors have considered managing the patient/client financial arrangements as a necessary evil to practicing medicine. Others, however, turned around their disdain for managing finances and recognized that their net profit can be positively effected by having proper financial policies in place along with workable billing and collection procedures.
Many, many, many of the doctors surveyed by The Practice Solution Magazine’s survey team have little to no experience in managing the finances of their practices. Not surprisingly, many of them have been burned by less than ethical employees or contractors.
While some of the articles in this issue of The Practice Solution are not the cure to extensive training in handling all aspects of your financial procedures, you will find some articles that will be of use at least in getting better collections-to-production ratios and keeping your receivables from getting too old to collect.
Additionally we have three outside contributing writers this issue writing on various subjects.
Our first such article is from Brad Beck, Vice President of Bank of America Practice Solutions. In this article you’ll find very useful information regarding some new, very advantageous tax ramifications of purchasing equipment. This is something that is very relevant to the “bottom line” of all of our readers. It is written in an easy to understand way.
The second article is from Dr. Amy Shroff, owner and chief of staff at the Veterinary Emergency & Specialty Center of New England in Waltham, Massachusetts. Dr. Shroff was originally contacted by one of Solutions Online Magazine’s surveyors and expressed a desire to provide other veterinarians with her hard-earned experience, especially in the area of working with staff. We thought her information to be valuable enough to include in this issue so that other doctors could benefit from what she has learned.
Our other guest writer is Lisa Thayer, co-owner, with her husband Michael, of Goldfish Network.com. I have had the fortunate experience of meeting the Thayers through our local Chamber of Commerce. In the recent past, we have discussed online marketing and how it can be somewhat convoluted. Lisa felt that since many doctors don’t get as much of an opportunity to explore the Internet as most businesspeople get to, they might be able to use some direction in developing marketing for their own websites. The first installment of a four-part series of articles written by Lisa on internet marketing is in this issue.
Additionally, as we do in each issue, we have articles that are relevant to activities in the three health care professions that compose the majority of our readers.
As usual, we hope you find the information in this issue informative and useful. And, if this is your first visit to our magazine, please take the time to look at some of our past issues for additional material that you may find helpful in the management of your practice.
I should caution you, however. I have at least one report of a doctor who lost too much sleep reading back issues of The Practice Solution Magazine late at night.
I can’t be held responsible for missed appointments due to lack of sleep.
Sincerely,
Cory D. Radosevich
Managing Editor
The Practice Solution Magazine