Building Your Medical Practice vs. Building Your Business

---

Often the last thing a physician has in mind is the day-to-day business practices that will make their office run smoothly. Whether it is an office of one or a combined office of two or three physicians, most doctors did not study medicine to worry about billing procedures or collecting payments. They entered the profession to help people.

The truth is that a physician’s office is still a business, and while building your medical practice is important, building your business is just as important. Bills must be charged and paid to insurers, HIPAA regulations followed and new government policies implemented. Small physician practices are often guilty of letting their medical billing get out of hand, as it is the last thing they want to deal with after seeing multitudes of patients and writing up medical charts and transcripts.

But for any business to be successful, money must be coming through the door. Understanding how a medical practice produces cash flow, the amount of money generated and used by a medical practice is essential to successfully manage a business.

One way for physicians to get a handle on their medical billing is by creating a business plan. Business plans can help predict long-term and short-term growth. A business plan usually has a cash-flow analysis in it for businesses to understand how to make a profit. A customized business plan for physicians allows many to avoid pitfalls in medical billing, and to increase cash flow.

A medical billing plan will help you take into account how you are billing patients and how long follow-up should take for billing. This increases cash flow and profitability for a practice. Some other areas to consider are:

• Yearly Objectives
• Mission and values
• Key drivers of success
• Staff and office organization

A customized business plan and cash flow analysis is designed to maximize profits and generate positive cash flow in the shortest time possible. Outsourcing this plan to experienced professionals is often the best way to create a customized plan that maximizes profits and generates positive cash flow in the shortest time possible. This can also help with avoiding pitfalls and headaches that go with growing a business, any business, even a medical practice.

Medical billing is a huge part of any physician’s office. By understanding long-term goals of medical billing and having them implemented into a plan, a goal is reachable and understood by everyone in the office. Outsourcing this business plan to a team of professionals that understands medical billing is the key to implementing a successful plan, as they will have worked with hundreds of other physicians who have the same issues.

At IMA Solutions, we have worked with new medical practices, so we know how to develop a plan that can help you create a viable cash flow within 60-90 days. We also continually review your progress so that we can adjust the plan as necessary. By having seasoned professionals help create and implement these plans for cash-flow improvement, physicians will be way ahead of the business game so they can do what they do best: helping people and building their medical practice.