Silkin Management Group’s blog posted on January 31st discussed some new incentives that the Obama Administration is proposing to help small businesses start up and expand. Some of these incentives are tax related and cover some issues we’ve discussed in this multi-part series covering tax issues to be aware of in 2012. Articles from this series can be found on several Silkin Management Group blog sites including this one.

Our earlier articles have covered the following points: a) increased tax audits and b) some potential tax consequences of the federal health care legislation that will be ruled on by the Supreme Court this year, c) extensions of some favorable tax rules, d) federal, state and local governments on the look-out for new sources of revenue, e) the potential effects of the Presidential race and election, f) potential increases in unemployment taxes and g) possible changes in estate taxes.

Here is another issue that any tax payer should be aware of:

• The impact of low interest rates: As we all know, interest rates are the lowest they’ve been in decades and, according to Ben Bernake at the Federal Reserve, they will remain low for at least several more years. While this doesn’t provide much incentive for savings accounts, it does impact dealing with the IRS. With these low interest rates also used by the IRS the penalties for underpaying estimated taxes are greatly reduced. The last quarter of 2011 and the first quarter of this year finds the IRS charging only 3 percent on underpayments. Some business owners will consider the 3 percent underpayment charge small or even irrelevant compared to the value of keeping the cash until the end of the year to run and expand their business. Note: this does not mean that the taxes will not be owed. If you are contemplating this strategy, you still must make sure you have the cash to pay the taxes by April so you don’t incur penalties on top of the interest.

We will finish up this series in future Silkin Management Group blogs.

Scott Barnard
Silkin Management Group Consultant

For more information about Silkin Management Group visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com or call us at 800-695-0257.

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Yesterday we began a series of articles concerning tax trends that readers of our Silkin Management Group blogs should be aware of for 2012. The two points we covered in yesterday’s article were a) increased tax audits and b) some potential tax consequences of the federal health care legislation that will be ruled on by the Supreme Court this year. You can link to that Silkin Management Group blog site here: http://bit.ly/xjpz9Y

Today we’ll cover two more 2012 tax related points that Silkin Management Group clients and blog readers should be aware of.

• Extension of some favorable tax rules: Last year we wrote about some tax rules that were very favorable to businesses. These rules included: a) the ability to take 100% depreciation on eligible business related equipment purchases; b) complete exclusion for gain on the sales of business stock that qualifies. Point “a” is most relevant to Silkin Management Group clients. These tax rules expired at the end of 2011 but were and are expected to be extended at least through 2012. There seems to be some bipartisan support for this so, hopefully, these extensions will not be part of the continual partisan bickering and lack of fiscal progress by Congress.

• New revenue sources: Every government entity is searching and searching for increased revenue to balance extremely unbalanced budgets. This includes state and local governments. As a simple example you might look at how much more parking and motor vehicle moving violation tickets cost these days. An increase in state sponsored gambling is one of the biggest new sources of revenue. Some states are attempting to legalize on line gambling to bring in money. Keep an eye out in your state and city for new tax rules and laws being implemented to raise revenue in your area. Any increase in revenue comes out of someone’s wallet, likely including yours.

During this week we will continue to add to this list of 2012 tax related issues that all business owners should be aware of.

Eric Korb
Silkin Management Group Consultant

For more information about Silkin Management Group, give us a call at 800-695-0257 or visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com.

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In yesterday’s Silkin Management Group blog we presented Part 4 of a series of five articles covering different methods that small businesses can use to potentially reduce their health care costs. You can access yesterday’s article at this Silkin Management Group blog site: http://bit.ly/AAxY9e

An article in Forbes magazine originally presented these ideas, and we’ve attempted to summarize them in this series for Silkin Management Group clients and readers of our various blog sites. If you are interested in reading this article you can find it here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/roblynch/2012/01/05/ten-ways-small-businesses-can-lower-healthcare-costs-and-hire-more-people-in-2012/

In the earlier articles we have gone over eight different ideas that small business owners can look into to help reduce their health care costs. They are:

• Pooling with other businesses in an insurance plan.
• Due proper due-diligence when shopping for a plan – get as many quotes as possible.
• Implement a wellness program.
• Implement a policy regarding smokers.
• Set up a wellness hotline.
• Be part of a pilot program for clinical trials.
• Review your premiums and who you are paying for.
• Investigate cost sharing with employees.

Today we will go over the final two ideas presented in the Forbes article.

• Only cover generic drugs: According to the Generic Pharmaceutical Association you can save up to 80% on the cost of drugs when you use generic drugs versus name brand drugs. With the ever increasing proliferation of pharmaceutical drugs in our society, this savings can be significant and thereby help reduce premiums.

• Reduce the choices of providers: There are plans out there that offer a smaller number of doctors and HMOs and include ones that are significantly less expensive. You can limit the choices that your employees have which can result in reduced premiums. This is something worthwhile to look into.

Scott Barnard
Silkin Management Group Consultant

For more information about Silkin Management Group, call us at 800-695-0257 or visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com

Silkin Management Group

Silkin Management Group has presented 11 different articles on our various Silkin Management Group blog sites, including this one, concerning over 20 benefits and reasons to hold short morning meetings in a health care office. Today we will give you the full list of all 22 reasons/benefits for your review. More detailed explanations of each point can be found in each of the previous articles.

• Scheduling of emergency patients.
• Reviewing the day’s schedule and possible trouble spots.
• Filling openings in the schedule.
• Being aware of new patients.
• Medical alerts or medical issues to be aware of.
• Confirming any lab case interaction.
• Patient/client financial situations.
• Insurance review for patients/clients coming in that day.
• Being aware of any relevant information about a patient/client such as they just got married.
• If a patient/client is a friend or relative of the Doctor or staff.
• What to do if a staff member is absent.
• Reviewing any special needs for tomorrow that need to be taken care of ahead of time.
• Being aware of any “VIP” patients – most particularly patients who refer.
• Reviewing practice goals and status of any bonus/incentive programs.
• Identifying potential calls for the Doctor.
• Analyzing yesterday’s schedule.
• Dentists only: Hygiene schedule review.
• Dentists only: New patient prophy review.
• Reviewing positive patient/client feedback.
• Reviewing negative patient feedback.
• Practice Announcements.
• Restating Your Mission Statement.

As we pointed out in our last article, if you aren’t holding morning meetings, start now and take up a few of these points at a time. Then start adding more items until you have a regular agenda for your meetings throughout the week. If you are already holding these meetings, review the above list and make sure you include any items that may be relevant and/or helpful.

Remember, the purpose of these meetings is to provide greater coordination and teamwork in the office. Properly done they will help increase office efficiency, decrease double and triple work and doctor interruptions, and facilitate higher production and a happier office. That’s what Silkin Management Group clients find when they’ve properly implemented this management tool.

Jack Hennessey
Silkin Management Group Consultant

For more information about Silkin Management Group visit our website at www.silkinmanageentgroup.com.

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Today we’ll present the 10th article in the Silkin Management Group series covering 25 different reasons for holding morning meetings in your health care office. The previous articles are on this blog site as well as several other Silkin Management Group blog sites. The last article can be accessed here: http://bit.ly/zhT1r1

Nearly all Silkin Management Group clients are dentists, veterinarians and optometrists and all come to us wanting to run a more efficient and productive practice. Morning meetings help achieve that for all the reasons we have gone over in previous articles. Today we’ll add several more.

• Reviewing positive patient/client feedback: Patients or clients with positive feedback often relay this information to the staff, but less often the doctor. The morning meeting is a great place to share this type of positive feedback with the doctor and the rest of the staff. It increases morale and sense of purpose throughout the office.

• Reviewing negative patient feedback: As with positive feedback, patients/clients rarely share problems with the doctor but may speak about it with certain staff. Patient problems, where appropriate, should be discussed at the morning meeting so that the proper corrective actions can be taken. It may be more appropriate to discuss the problem in private with the doctor and appropriate staff rather than spread “bad news” throughout the office. The office manager should decide the best way to handle this situation. The important thing is that the information gets looked at and the proper correction takes place.

We still have two more benefits of holding morning meetings to present which we will do in future articles on Silkin Management Group blog sites.

Dave McKevitt
Silkin Management Group Consultant

For more information about Silkin Management Group visit our website at www.silkinmanageentgroup.com or calling us at 800-695-0257.

Silkin Management Group

Silkin Management Group has published on our various blog sites two previous articles summarizing different ways that small businesses can control health care costs. These ideas came from an article in Forbes magazine which you can access here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/roblynch/2012/01/05/ten-ways-small-businesses-can-lower-healthcare-costs-and-hire-more-people-in-2012/

Since Silkin Management Group clients, as well as many readers of our Silkin Management Group blogs, are small business owners we thought it would be useful to pass along some of the points from this article in a summary form.

The ideas covered in our two previous articles were:

• Pooling with other small businesses in an insurance plan.
• Diligently shopping many different plans for the most cost effective one available.
• Setting up wellness programs.
• Avoiding smokers and/or doing something pro-active with existing smokers.

Today we’ll go over two more ideas.

• Nursing hotlines: If you can set up some sort of nursing hotline, where your employees can call a nurse as their first response to a health issue, you can possibly reduce costs. Surveys show that these hotline reduce the number of trips to ERs and doctor’s offices as well as reduce employee absenteeism. This would be something worthwhile to look in to.

• Be a “guinea pig”: Check with your health plan carrier and see if you could be part of a pilot program for clinical trials and get reduced rates for participating. The Forbes article goes into this in a bit more detail. It may be worth a few phone calls to see if this is possible.

The Forbes article has several more ideas that we will pass long in future blogs on our Silkin Management Group blog sites. Keep an eye out for them.

Scott Barnard
Silkin Management Group Consultant

For more information about Silkin Management Group, visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com

Silkin Management Group

Several weeks ago we presented a few articles on some of our Silkin Management Group blog sites about how to make a practice as valuable as possible when one has an eye towards a future sale of the practice. You can link to the last article we wrote at this Silkin Management Group site: How to Increase Practice Value

Silkin Management Group consults private practice health care clients throughout the United States and Canada. One of the areas we help our clients with is making a practice as valuable as possible because many clients see the sale of their practice as a key part of their retirement plan. Whether a client is nearing retirement age or not, increasing the value of a practice is always relevant.

As discussed in the above referenced Silkin Management Group blog, we feel the key factor in the value of a practice is its profitability. In this last blog we went over some areas that affect profits including hiring and training staff, job descriptions and office policy, job reviews and recall and reactivation systems.

Here are some additional areas for you to evaluate in your practice, areas that significantly affect the net of any practice.

• Managing Receivables:  do you know what your collection rate is and what rate it should minimally be? Past Silkin Management Group blogs have discussed this. As a general rule of thumb, anything less than 95% is poor.

• Marketing:  do you have regular marketing activities that are predictable to bring in new patients and clients?  Do you get the majority of your new patients from referrals?

• Facilities and Equipment:  are your facilities attractive and pleasing to the eye? Do you have well maintained, up to date equipment?

• Financial Planning:  do you have a financial planning system that insures you follow a budget, that expenses aren’t incurred without having the money to pay for them, that money is set aside for future purchases such as equipment, etc.?

Compare the above points to what exists or doesn’t exist in your practice. These areas, as well as the ones mentioned in the previous blog, are some of the keys to practice profitability and what Silkin Management Group consultants go over with their clients.

For more information about how Silkin Management Group can help any practice can do well, visit our website at www.silkinmanageentgroup.com.

Dave McKevitt

Silkin Management Group Consultant

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