WHERE IS MY NET PROFIT?

At Silkin Management Group, we don’t try to just increase the production of your office, we just as importantly want to see a nice increase in net profit for you. Why work on increasing production if you don’t make more money? That would be totally foolish.

You have worked hard all week, the office atmosphere has been snap, crackle, pop; the staff have been getting along with each other; and you are proud of the team spirit they have each shown. In fact, your staff have almost read your mind and anticipated your every need. The patients have all arrived on time for their appointments, and the majority of them have even listened to you and accepted your treatment plans!

Now it’s Friday afternoon, the staff have their paychecks, which include production bonuses because the office has done so well this week. But you look at your bank balance, and you are surprised and seriously disappointed at the lack of funds left over for you.

Where did your net go?

Did you work hard all week to earn less money? The bank balance should be going up, not down!

You wonder if it's worth it. You worked hard all week - only to earn less money. All of that increased production may just have landed you into a higher “office-overhead/higher tax-bracket” situation. It's that frustrating income vortex - the place where despite producing and collecting more, you take home the same or less. And after a few of these "successful" weeks you shake your head and realize that if you have much more of this kind of success, you'll go broke.

A Silkin Management Group consultant would take a look at what might have happened:

• Do your staff work overtime? Do you have systems in place to prevent this without being notified?


• Do you have redundancy in your staff scheduling? Are you scheduling for efficiency? Do you have 5 staff members on duty when 4 staff will do during the slower times of the day?


• Can you consolidate your equipment loans into one loan, thus saving you interest and lowering your payments?


• Can you reduce the amount of inventory the practice holds?


• Are you collecting all you bills? Are your collections at 98% at least?


• Are any staff functions overlapping?


• Do you have an efficient office communication system whereby staff are not interrupting other staff when they are doing their jobs, thus reducing efficiency?


• Do you have any monitoring system to know, factually and statistically who is productive and who isn’t?


• Is there any gossiping going on in the office?


• Are there any problem staff members who aren’t being handled?

These are just some of the areas that Silkin would look into to help you with the management of your practice and figure out any problems with your net income. Your net should be between 35%-55%, depending on your profession, and area. If it’s not, there’s something wrong with the management of your office.

If you would like help with this area of your practice, feel free to contact us at: info@silkinmanagementgroup.com or call 800-695-0257. You can also visit our website: silkinmanagementgroup.com

All the best,
Lyn Ribisi
Appointment Setter, Silkin Management Group

Please visit our other blog at: silkinmanagementgroup.blogspot.com

Steps to Safeguard Your Practice against Embezzlement

Note from the editor:

In our first issue of Solutions Magazine, we published an article entitled "Steps to Safeguard Your Practice against Embezzlement."
As our research staff continues to discover that this issue is still prevalent with doctors nation-wide, we are re-visiting this same article with additional advises.

Minimize the Risk

More than likely, you've heard some horror story about a colleague who had a trusted employee embezzle money from him/her. There are steps you can take to minimize the risk of embezzlement.

The following procedures are recommended by an accountant and should be part of your normal routine as safeguards against embezzlement:

Cash Handling:
1.Firm policy that every patient/client gets a receipt whether they pay or not.

2.Cash handling and cash record-keeping duties need to be segregated. Have one person collect patient/client portions over the counter and another person post balances. Have a third person do bank deposits. As owner, play an active role in monitoring sales and cash if you have too few employees to fully separate the duties for handling cash and collections.

3.Each month, compare the amount of your collections that was cash. There will be some fluctuation, of course, but if it goes low one period, it is suspicious.

4.Start a patient/client sign-in sheet where patients/clients simply sign-in. Compare this on a daily basis to an over-the-counter-collections report (and day-sheet or equivalent), looking for inconsistencies such as patients/clients who are on the sign-in sheet but not listed on the day-sheet report. Spot check by phone call to patients/clients who are reported to not have paid a portion due that day. This can be done as a "quality control" call to the patient/clients. Of the questions asked one might be something like, "It's our policy that all patients/clients who pay any cash on the day of service receive a receipt. Did you receive a receipt today for any cash paid?" Implement this policy in writing and DO IT. This will make it far more dangerous to attempt embezzlement.

5.Have a written policy to conduct unannounced checks of petty cash and other cash accounts on a regular (bi-weekly or monthly) basis. Conduct these checks without fail.

Accounts Receivables and Statements:
6.Review your accounts receivable aging report monthly. Look for changes from the last month's report that don't make sense. Scrutinize any balance over sixty days old as its existence normally does not make sense and minimally means a dropped ball by someone if not hanky-panky on collections.

7.Have a written policy that no balance write-offs or account adjustments are permitted without written Doctor approval. If possible, consider a 'lock-out' (in your computer software) to allow ONLY the owner the ability to write-off balances.

8.Spot check day-sheets against patient/client charts, ledger cards (or patient/client account records) and the schedule book at least once a quarter, looking for any discrepancies. That you do this - sporadically - should be overtly promoted to the staff.
9.Routinely check with visiting patients/clients who have balances over thirty days old - and with past-due patients/clients you are calling - to ensure they've received a statement from you. The idea here is to look for incidents of the collections person throwing statements out versus mailing them in order to cover a payment embezzlement.

10.Become suspicious if you find you are all of a sudden paying a lot of refund checks to patients/clients.

Accounts Payables and Purchasing:
11.Ensure all expenditures are authorized (via written request) and documented.

Safeguarding Records and Miscellaneous:
12.If using paper day-sheets, then remove these day-sheets from the office each quarter, and store them at home or in a safe deposit box.

13.Always change the locks immediately when a key-holding employee leaves employment.

14.The last thing to remember is to assume that if someone can rip you off, they will - and take steps to prevent it; and if your antenna goes up on some circumstance, you carefully check into it.

www.silkinmanagementgroup.com
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Search Engine Marketing for Doctors

By Lisa Thayer,

GoldfishNetwork.com

Surveys show that over 80% of internet users find new web sites by using search engines.

The question that seems to be on everyone's minds today is "How do I get my website top placement on the search engines?" If you have a website, you may have found other websites above yours when you have looked for your site in Google. In order to answer the previous question, I need to give you a little background on the way search engines work.

There are two primary ways (out of many) that your website gets to the top of search engines: one is to pay for placement, the other is to market and design your website so that it rises up through the page ranks "organically" in search engine results.

Before I begin to discuss pay-for-placement online marketing, I have to get on my soap box and make a special announcement: If you glean nothing else from this article, remember this - having a baseline BEFORE you start paying money for advertising is imperative as is tracking results of an online marketing program. A baseline is the point at which you begin a marketing campaign so you can compare the effectiveness of the campaign.

Programs such as Google's AdWords and AdSense or Yahoo's Sponsored Search are good examples of paying for placement. Each search engine has their own individual fee structure. The price you pay to advertise in this manner depends on the "keywords" you choose and the competition for those placements. Keywords can be thought of as the words a person would type into the search box on search engines. They can consist of words, phrases, or alphanumerical terms. If you are spending your marketing budget on keyword ads, you need to choose your keywords carefully.

Using keywords that are overly broad such as "best dentist USA" can result in bringing more traffic to your website, but if you only have dental offices in California, that search probably won't result in a new patient. Conversely, choosing keywords that are overly specific might bring in too little traffic, like "veterinarians who graduated from Purdue in 1983". Keywords are so important in fact, that selecting keywords has become an industry all its own.

The two top search engines used by the general public are Google and Yahoo. Google and Yahoo also supply some of the smaller search engines such as AOL, My Space Search, Netscape, Alta Vista, etc. with their search results. In fact, if you added up the huge market share of Google it would account for almost 70% of all searches!

As previously mentioned, having a baseline BEFORE you start paying money for advertising is imperative as is tracking results of an online marketing program. You obtain a baseline by having your web designer add a tracking program/ code to your website. We set up Google Analytics on all of our client's websites.

Google Analytics (GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. Its main highlight is that a webmaster can optimize his/her marketing campaigns through the use of GA's analysis of where the visitors came from, how long they stayed on the website and their geographical position. Users can define and track conversions, or goals. Goals might include sales, lead generation, viewing a specific page, or downloading a particular file. By using this tool, marketers can determine which ads are performing, and which are not, as well as find unexpected sources of quality visitors.
Many of my clients have asked, "Wait a minute…why is Google Analytics free?" The simple answer is that Google knows that if you have the information to make informed online advertising decisions, you will be more likely to advertise. And, since Google is the giant of the search engine world, chances are they will be able to earn your business.

Next time, I'll discuss spiders and crawlers and bots…oh my!

Lisa Thayer is owner of GoldfishNetwork.com, a website design and marketing company located just south of Portland, Oregon. GoldfishNetwork.com serves clients across the U.S. Lisa can be reached at 503-783-0440 or by e-mail: Lisa@GoldfishNetwork.com

Extending Credit: Tips to Control Your Accounts Receivable

Assess the patient/client's credit worthiness before extending any sort of credit. Have them fill out a "credit application" (see sample in the Form section,) and verify the information supplied.

Always charge for any credit extended, using a monthly percentage or a flat service fee.

When extending credit of any kind, have the patient/client sign an agreement covering the terms of the credit. Ensure that they fully understand and agree to the terms of payment.

Monitor all accounts monthly so that you know who may be delinquent. Take immediate action on any account over 30 days past due. The older an account gets, the more difficult it will be to collect. Call the patient/client right away and make arrangements to bring the account current.

Flag past due accounts by putting a red self-adhesive dot on the upper right corner of the patient/client's chart folder. In this way it is easier for any staff person to see that the patient/client has a past due account and it will be more likely to get addressed.

Each day review the schedule for the next day so that you will be prepared to see any patients/clients whose accounts need addressing. Confer with the receptionist on anyone who will need to be seen after their appointment, or from whom the receptionist would collect over-the counter.

If a patient/client you had planned to collect from has forgotten his/her checkbook or does not have the agreed upon amount, the receptionist should contact the accounts manager or the office manager so that the matter can be addressed.

Patients/clients with delinquent accounts, who are not making an attempt to handle it, should be sent to a collection agency. Again, this should be done as soon as possible before the account gets too old to realistically expect payment.

Ensure that statements are accurate and are being mailed out every month on time and without fail. Utilize appropriate labels on the statements such as: "Thank you for your payment."

www.silkinmanagementgroup.com
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