A doctor’s office is a service-based business in which patients pay for the doctor’s services, and occasionally pay for testing performed as well as medication administered in the doctor’s office. As such, a doctor’s office must maintain accounting records so patients and their insurance companies can be billed correctly for the services the doctor performed. In addition to payments rendered by patients, doctors must collect and record a variety of additional accounting figures, including overhead, equipment, medication and labor costs to ensure their practices are profitable.

Thus the doctor needs to be acquainted with the following types of information needed as listed below;

Patient Information

Since the office of the doctor is the business, then the patients are seen as the customers of the business, therefore information on the customer is always good to have. Along with personal details such as name and contact, the social security number or its equivalent of the customer should be collected with employer information. The reason for this is that after billing the visits and the customers do not pay, payments can be received by other means.

The staff of the business should also ensure that the insurance details of every customer are collected and recorded, including the insurance company’s billing address and co-pay information, so the proper co-pay can be collected at the time of the visit. This insurance information should be updated often (at least once every year). This is because health insurance policies are renewed yearly, so if the customer changes plan or companies, then the billing information and co-pay amounts may change as well.

General Accounting Information

Medical practices also need to record general accounting information about the practice, including operating costs and expenses. These costs include bills for telephone services, rents, electricity bills, cost of equipment and the very important cost of labor. Since workers need to be paid regularly and on time, these costs have to be checked to ensure that there is more money flowing into the business than is flowing out. This ultimately avoids running the business at a loss. Doctors usually like to focus on attending to medical needs hence it is advised that the services of a professional accountant for doctors be employed.

Collaboration with Other Practices

It is not uncommon to see doctors collaborating with other practices such as test labs. This collaboration would afford the customer to be charged less when referred to such labs for tests by a collaborating doctor. Sometimes the patients do not have to pay at all at the labs. This is why it is important to keep records of the visits and records of how many times patients have been referred by the doctor. Such records would help keep tabs of what to pay to the medical laboratories at the end of the month or the year. The records will also help bill the visits properly to the customer and their insurance company.

Medvisor Consultants have GP accountants that are highly qualified to handle your medical office. Being armed with the required skill, experience, intelligence and updated legislative regulations, they can handle all forms of complexities in the business.