Your Data and Practice Management Metrics
Big Data? Can Dr. Ben get the benefits of data-informed decision making in his Practice Management? Carmen stomped around the kitchen, slamming cabinet doors, and mixing ingredients furiously. Ben wondered how dinner would taste with this level of irritation mixed in. “I am so mad,” Carmen informed him, as though he could have missed that. “You know a restaurant like mine is always just on the edge of profitability.” “I thought the pizzeria was doing well,” Ben objected. “We are! But doing well for a pizza place can be an 8% margin. I believe in giving good value, treating my workers well, and using fresh ingredients. And every time I turn around there’s another expense!” Carmen slammed the oven. “Hey, come sit down and let me get you a glass of water.” “I know I’m making a big deal over this, but seriously, Ben, this just makes me mad. We’ve had Wifi in the restaurant since we opened, and now all of a sudden we’re supposed to pay an extra fee and buy a special router and — I don’t know. I’m going to have to sell five more pizzas a day just to keep the same level of service I have now.” “So don’t have Wifi,” suggested Ben. “In a pizza place? You’re kidding, right?” Carmen shook her head. “Hospitality industry surveys say that over 70% of my regular customers could go elsewhere if I didn’t have free Wifi for them.” “Does it have to be free?” Carmen’s pitying expression answered the question. Ben persevered. “Okay, what if you raise the price of the pizza to cover the extra cost of the Wifi?” Carmen stared off into the distance and her eyes narrowed. “That’s not impossible,” she said. “I’d only have to raise prices by about 26 cents per item… if I went from $12.79 to $12.99 and made up the difference on the drinks, probably no one would notice.” “How can you do that?” Ben asked his wife. “It took you less than a minute to figure that out.” “In business, you have to know your numbers,” Carmen said firmly. “How can anyone know all those numbers?” Ben objected. “We have so many numbers in our practice, I don’t even know what I should be keeping track of, let alone what to do with them.” “Then how do you know when you need to hire another staff member, which products to stock, or which services are most profitable?” Ben considered the question. “I guess I don’t. We’re tied into all kinds of information systems, but they don’t seem to connect with decisions about the practice. As long as we’re doing pretty well and have enough money to pay everybody, I don’t really think about those things. If we’re falling behind, I cut out the free coffee in the break room…” “And stay up nights worrying,” Carmen’s voice was soft. “Wouldn’t it make sense to have control of that information for your Practice Management?” “I guess,” Ben frowned. “I don’t see how I can add any more to my work day, though, or to Pam’s.” Ben thought about his office manager. Pam was great, but he felt fairly sure that she didn’t have control of the numbers the way Carmen did. Carmen stood up and went more calmly to check the oven. “Can you help Jonathan wash up for dinner? And thanks for helping me sort out my problem.” “I’m always happy to help,” said Ben. He thought he might be the one who needed help, though. Can Dr. Ben get the benefits of data-informed decision making in his practice? Disclaimer: For HIPAA compliance, all characters appearing in this post are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons or actual events is purely coincidental.
Is the Infinite Banking System the Answer?
by Garrett B. Gunderson Some of the most frequent questions we get at Freedom FastTrack have to do with infinite banking. The financial strategy, which leverages the living benefits of cash value life insurance, was created by Nelson Nash and is detailed in his book Becoming Your Own Banker. Other popular books on the subject include Bank on Yourself by Pamela Yellen, The Banking Effect by Dan Thompson, Prescription for Wealth by Tom McFie, and Live Your Life Insurance by Kim Butler. I would characterize my attitude toward infinite banking as “cautiously positive.” I’ve personally interviewed Nelson Nash twice by flying him to Utah. I’ve ran hundreds of infinite banking calculations using financial software and consulting financial software developer Todd Langford. I’ve even used the concept in my own life. The problem with the strategy is that most people who do it or want to do it ignore the larger context of their full financial blueprint. It is frequently sold as a magic bullet. It tends to be a classic case of, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” The truth is that it’s just one strategy and technique surrounding one product. And as you frequently hear me preach, strategies are only as useful and profitable as the people executing them. Infinite banking is a one-trick pony that can be useful in certain circumstances for certain people, but it’s not for everyone and it doesn’t solve every financial problem. To echo another theme I stress, if you’re asking whether or not you should use the strategy, the obvious answer is that you shouldn’t because you’re not educated enough yet. When you know enough about the strategy, you’ll know whether or not it’s appropriate for you, and how to execute it to fit within your particular financial blueprint and meet your specific needs. So let me give a brief overview of the strategy, then I’ll reveal its blind spots and pitfalls and explain how to use it appropriately. What is Infinite Banking? In concept, the strategy is simple: You use your whole life insurance cash value essentially as a line of credit. Instead of paying banks interest when you finance cars or other purchases, you pay that money back into your policy and essentially to yourself. This is done by funding dividend-paying, equity-building permanent life insurance. Once your policy is funded enough to make a major purchase, you utilize your cash value, take out a policy loan to make the purchase, then make “payments”—with interest—back to your own life insurance policy. The cash value of permanent life insurance is referred to as a “living benefit,” because you can access it throughout your life. Whereas term life insurance provides a death benefit only, permanent life insurance offers living benefits, such as the cash value, tax-free growth and tax-free withdrawals (under specific guidelines), liquidity, dividends (on certain policies), and liability protection (in most states). The strategy is smart, to be sure. Consider a five-year, $20,000 auto loan at 7 percent interest. On that loan your monthly payment would be $396.02. At the end of five years, you’ll have paid $3,761.44 in interest alone. Why not recapture that interest to build your own wealth, rather than padding bankers’ accounts? By the time you pay off the car, instead of just having a dramatically-depreciated asset, you’ll have the car, eventually you can build a way to have your $20,000 restored, and you can even have an additional $3,761 (not fully considering the interest that the insurance company may charge you on the borrowed money). So what could possibly be wrong with the strategy? Problem #1: Insurance Protection Comes First The trick to making infinite banking work as quickly and effectively as possible is typically getting a low amount of insurance coverage (face value, or death benefit), then max out your premiums (also known as over-funding the policy). Remember that the goal is to build up your cash value. The focus is on the living benefits, not the death benefit. But fully protecting your human life value with the proper death benefit amount should take precedence over any living benefit. Infinite banking makes the cash value the main benefit of permanent life insurance and overshadows the importance of the death benefit. Before you even consider infinite banking, you first need to maximize your insurance protection. That is the primary and most important purpose of life insurance. Living benefits are nice, and in most cases I highly recommend permanent life insurance with living benefits over term insurance. But they should be viewed in their proper context as supplemental benefits, not the primary benefit. In fact, before you even consider the type of insurance you should buy, you first need to understand how much death benefit to have. Your amount of life insurance to protect your economic value (replacement of income) is the primary consideration to drive all decisions regarding the type you purchase. This is why I don’t always advocate whole life insurance 100 percent of the time. I’ve seen too many cases where insurance salesmen sold permanent policies people couldn’t afford, and who then lost their policies because they couldn’t fund them. Just as it’s a problem to get too little insurance coverage, it’s also damaging to get too much whole life insurance. Focusing on death benefit first avoids problems like this. Some people may purchase convertible term insurance now to get the proper amount, then convert it to permanent insurance as their cash flow situation improves. (HINT: make sure your term insurance is convertible and with a company that has whole life insurance). This is another way to say that a person’s comprehensive financial blueprint should govern financial decisions, which leads me to my next point. Problem #2: Lack of Context Infinite banking, if right for you, should be just one piece of a much larger puzzle. It shouldn’t be the one thing you implement at the expense of other important things in your life. Your complete financial blueprint
Chiropractic Software Practice Analysis
Why Do a Dream Practice Analysis (DPA)? Can Dr. Ben help his partners see why he wants to do a DPA when they only see why not? Ben shut his office door quietly behind him and gave a deep sigh. He had a meeting coming up with his partners. He was hoping they’d join him in going through a Dream Practice Analysis. His wife had suggested that he prepare a PowerPoint presentation with the objections he had been hearing in the casual discussions they’d had so far. “That way,” Carmen had said, “you’ll be prepared. You won’t get defensive or go off track or decide to go along with the majority even though you know they’re wrong. You’ll be giving your ideas a fair chance.” Ben wasn’t sure he showed up as well as he’d have liked in Carmen’s imaginary picture of the meeting, and he wasn’t sure how his partners would react if he showed up with a slide presentation, but he figured it was worth trying. So he had put together his slides and now it was time for a final run-through before the meeting. “We don’t need to waste time on dreaming. We’re an established practice,” said the first one. Ben ran through his thoughts on that: how easy it was to get mired in the day to day details and to lose sight of the big picture and how important it was to reset goals sometimes. He found himself speaking eloquently — under his breath, of course — about the value of having an objective outsider helping them to see where they were and how they could step up to the next place they wanted to be. Deciding to try a Dream Practice Analysis wasn’t a criticism of their current practice, he realized, and he wasn’t sure that he had ever made that point in their discussions. The next slide said, “Reducing costs is the key to ROI.” His talks with Carmen had really helped him understand this one. He knew his partners couldn’t see how spending money on software could provide a good return on investment, because they didn’t see it as an investment. They thought of it as overhead, and figured that increasing overhead couldn’t be a good thing. Carmen, with her business school background, could see how the right practice management software could increase revenue and reduce costs, so the investment in the software would pay off. Ben also realized that the practice might need a expert to help them figure out the potential ROI. That brought him up to his next slide: “We don’t want to share sensitive information.” Of course, being careful with information was second nature for any medical practice, but it was clear to Ben that they really didn’t know what to do with their numbers. They had tried to figure out the potential ROI for themselves, but they hadn’t been successful. In fact, if he was honest with himself, he thought they had mostly been confused. Ben decided not to share that observation with his partners. Instead, he figured he’d emphasize the value of having expert insight and help the group determine some parameters that would help them feel comfortable sharing the information that needed to be shared. Finally, Ben turned to a slide that just said, “Opportunity.” He knew that the kind of insights the practice could get from the Dream Practice Analysis with experts who had worked with plenty of other practices would be worth paying for — and they weren’t having to pay. This was an opportunity to get some valuable consultation that would give them important knowledge, no matter what decision they made. Ben saved his presentation to a thumb drive and headed for the conference room. He felt lighter than he had in a while. Can Dr. Ben help his partners see why he wants to do a DPA when they only see why not? Disclaimer: For HIPAA compliance, all characters appearing in this post are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons or actual events is purely coincidental.
Chiropractic EHR Software | Symmetry Spine and Wellness Center Dream Practice of the Month
Dr. Cynthia Boyd knows how to build a chiropractic dream practice: it takes hard work, a concerted team effort, and the expertise of Genesis chiropractic software and billing staff. “I have my dream practice,” says Dr. Boyd. “There are not many areas that need improvement.” The key to success for Dr.Boyd is balancing all aspects of practice management using Genesis cloud-based chiropractic software: “The [Genesis] system is amazing. I was 3,000 miles away for a month and I knew exactly what was going on.” Dr. Boyd doesn’t have time to micromanage her staff. With Genesis, she can easily track everyone’s individual performance anytime from anywhere. Dr. Boyd can also keep an eye on vital Key Performance Indicators, such as chiropractic billing, with the Genesis Radar. Best of all, Dr. Boyd does not have to change the way she runs her practice to optimize her workflow, complete her patient SOAP notes, and control compliance. As Dr. Boyd keeps growing her practice, she uses Genesis workflow engine to help manage teamwork among her staff and Genesis support team. The staff at Symmetry Spine and Wellness Center keeps the AR past 120 days low at 8 percent by consistently clearing the claims workbench while the weekly phone communications with her Practice Success Coach Heather Miller ensure her practice gets paid in full and on time. Coach Heather Miller: “Dr. Boyd is passionate about what she does and her business. She has found a balance with her practice and all of the other projects that she works on. Dr. Boyd trusts her employees to do their jobs without having to micromanage them. She has a great staff that works well together to get the job done and continue to grow the practice. In the end it all comes down to teamwork.”
