Should a Doctor or Dentist Hire an Accountant to do Bookkeeping for the Medical Practice?
This is a frequently asked question in our thread. Whenever there is an option to outsource some business function, the client undertakes a cost-benefit analysis either on paper or off the paper. Let us help you with that analysis that either you should put bookkeeping or accounting off your shoulders to an outsourced accountant or keep doing it yourself. Your expertise lies in seeing patients and helping them with their health issues. You make a good income out of it. In contrast to it, an accountant typically charges $500 or above for keeping your books monthly. It is quite a small investment when compared to benefits it provides.
Evaluation
Let’s evaluate what happens when you keep your books to yourself. Firstly, you have to keep account of all the inflows and outflows of your business. You have to record it for every dime that flows in or flows out of the business cycle. Then you have to carry it to the billing and revenue cycle. You also have to keep track of the ERA and EOB postings regarding how quickly the payer pays in a typical manner. You need to know about their allowed amounts as it helps you in negotiations. In this way, you can bifurcate the high paying and the low paying carriers. You may decide to drop the latter ones at some point in time.
Apart from the inflows, you also need to have an eye for the outflows or the expenses, to be particular. If you keep track of the expenses, you can be sure that there is no leakage in the bucket. The expenses typically include the rent, the salaries and the benefits for the employees, equipment interest and principal, marketing and advertising, credentialing fee, EHR and practice management fees, business and malpractice insurance, utilities, and other expenses, if any. As a small business enterprise owner, you need to keep track of each of these with proper documentation. Since you are the decision-maker in your business, you need to know these numbers. Numbers, when recorded properly, prove to be very handy in decisions like growth.
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Decision
Most of the professionals who keep accounting or bookkeeping to themselves use QuickBooks and are often heard saying that accounting or bookkeeping is not rocket science. If it is not rocket science, then I wonder, why do the CPAs come across misclassified transactions, balance sheets not in a balance, spilled accounts, entries booked into the wrong account, profit or loss accounts in balance sheet and vice versa and at the end a disastrous financial picture. Accounting or bookkeeping may not be rocket science, but it is surely not everyone’s cup of tea. You do what you are good at, so let the others do, on your behalf, what they are good at. Just like a medical problem cannot be taken to an accounting specialist; similarly, an accounting problem cannot be
fixed by a medical specialist.
Conclusion
The top priority for a doctor or a dentist is to take care of his patients and their health concerns. If you keep yourself under the mental load and stress of the accounting and bookkeeping issues, it will surely reflect in your professional performance. We cannot overlook the importance of accurate, proper, and timely record keeping and tax compliance for a business to run successfully. Therefore, our accounting experts’ team offers customized solutions tailored to our medical clientele financial needs, including doctors, dentists, and other healthcare professionals. These solutions encompass the accounting needs, bookkeeping, tax preparation, and payroll maintenance for your business. We specialize in taking care of your business’s health by tax reduction, smooth cash flows, and effective financial management. We are quite familiar with the industry you work in and the financial challenges it poses to you. Our goal is to provide stress-free accounting, simply your tax services and ultimately reduce your tax liability.
