As the owner of your own practice, you are not only responsible for the quality of patient care, and satisfaction of your employees, but also the viability of the organization you created. When it comes to your finance division it is important to understand the strategies and concepts necessary for maximizing your Net Revenue. All too often practice owners place their full attention on generating more gross revenue when in fact net revenue is the only thing that really matters when it comes to the viability of your practice.

As the owner of your own practice, you are not only responsible for the quality of patient care, and satisfaction of your employees, but also the viability of the organization you created. When it comes to your finance division it is important to understand the strategies and concepts necessary for maximizing your Net Revenue. All too often practice owners place their full attention on generating more gross revenue when in fact net revenue is the only thing that really matters when it comes to the viability of your practice.

As the owner of your own practice, you are not only responsible for the quality of patient care, and satisfaction of your employees, but also the viability of the organization you created. When it comes to your finance division it is important to understand the best set up and workflow to maximize your operational needs. All too often practice owners place their full attention on their front desk and clinical staff workflow and operations while the billing and bookkeeping "back-end” lags behind. Ironically it’s the "back end” that is controlling your MONEY LINES. The fact is: you are the CEO whose primary stats are growth/expansion and net revenue/profit because it’s the only thing that really matters when it comes to the viability of your practice.

As the owner of your own practice, you are not only responsible for the quality of patient care, and satisfaction of your employees, but also the viability of the organization you created. When it comes to your finance division it is important to understand the best set up and workflow to maximize your operational needs.  All too often practice owners place their full attention on their front desk and clinical staff workflow and operations while the billing and bookkeeping “back-end” lags behind.  Ironically it’s the “back end” that is controlling your MONEY LINES. The facts are you are the CEO whose primary stats are growth/expansion and net revenue/profit because it’s the only thing that really matters when it comes to the viability of your practice.

As the owner of your own practice you are now being looked upon as the leader of your group, and as that leader, your staff will only follow you if they trust you. Trust is built on transparency between you and your staff. The same could also be said for any marriage or friendship the basis of all healthy relationships can be found in the foundation of trust and respect. 

The year was 2001 and I had just completed my second year in private practice. Back then I thought if I gave everybody everything they wanted they would love me and my staff morale would be high and everybody would be happy. Why wouldn't it work that way? I was giving everyone everything they wanted. One hour treatments, paid documentation time, paid lunch, full-time benefits for working 36 hours or more and I don't think I ever denied a time off request. The reality is the more I gave the less I got. The more out exchange I went with my employees the worst things became. I began to think I needed them more than they needed me. I quickly lost the respect of my staff. They came to work wanting to be led and I came to work wanting to please. The idea of becoming an excellent personnel manager was quickly becoming a mystery to me.

The year was 2003 and I was losing my shirt financially. I was $85,000 in debt losing $5,000 a month when my wife told me we have $15,000 left our name and that if I had a solution I better put it in play now. Like so many other PT owners, when things are going well we will bury ourselves in patient care. It was not until I was willing to look at the areas of business that I did not have the understanding in that I needed that things began to change. The more I forced myself to learn how to do billing and to hold the line on my business expenses, the more successful my business began to be. Fortunately, being a good therapist and having good therapists work for me led our practice through this difficult time, because of our great reputation. But having a good reputation was not enough for us to pull it out alone. I needed to finally confront my billing department in order to make things right.