The next important step is to purchase insurance. Not insurance for patient but insurance for our license known as Professional Liability Insurance.
"Professional Liability Insurance provides protection from liabilities that could arise from the practice of our profession. As a professional rendering a service, that person, is susceptible to be taken to court if the client is dissatisfied with
the services rendered. A person could be taken to court for breach of
contract, negligence or performance issues with or without proof of the accusation. Professional Liability Insurance will (within Policy coverage Limits) help cover the cost of legal defense attorney fees as well as the cost of an eventual judgement rendered should the insured be found liable in court." ~ adapted from http://wiki.answers.com
Basically it means that we need insurance when we practice Acupuncture. Simple as that. Not only we need Professional Liability Insurance, we too need Business Insurance. When we setup a place to practice Acupuncture, we purchase Professional Liability Insurance in events when we are sued by patient because of our treatment. However if the patient slip and fell in our clinic and has decided to sue us, Professional Liability Insurance will not cover. This is where Business Insurance comes into play. Most of the Landlord required the tenant to purchase some sort of Business Insurance and I got mine from HISCOX.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Procedures in setting up clinic. Part 3
Now it is time to start making ourselves known, the easiest step is to setup a webpage. There are many free ways to setup a free webpage. Wix, Weebly, Yola are some of the free websites to setup webpages. The downside is you have no control over what software to use to design your own webpage. There is no domain name assign for you. For example your webpage name is abcacupuncture. If you design using free website, the link would be
https://www.wix.com/abcacupuncture.html but if you have your own domain name, the link would be https://www.abcacupuncture.com/
I have decided to own my own domain name, thus I went for to get one from Network Solution.The package fee is about $150 per year, including a domain name registration and a server space to upload my webpage. You can engage a webpage designer to design a webpage for you or you can design it yourself by learning a new webpage design software, which I did. The software I used is Xara. The learning curve is not too steep and it probably take you a few days to a week to familiarize with the software. A good source of teaching materials would be youtube, google and it should take no longer than 1 week to come up with a workable webpage to start with. As time goes by, whenever you need to modify your webpage, you can always do it because you are in control.
If you have chosen network solution as your provider, Xara as you webpage content builder, the next software you need is FileZilla. This is for you to upload your webpage design file onto the server. Usually after you have registered with Network Solution, they will issue you a login and password to access the FTP server. Using FileZilla, you can upload the webpage design files generated from Xara with ease. For Xara, the main thing is to export the webpage as html file before uploading, do not upload the anything that ends in .xar
After messing around with webpages, it is time to pay Google Business a visit. Create a business gmail account and login Google Business with that account. By this time you should have rented a clinic space. Fill in the information for the business. This is to allow people to look for you on Google Map. You need to make sure that you have rented a space before you begin this step because Google will send you a physical mail to verify the location of the clinic.
The reason for registering with Google Business is to allow ourselves to be in the radar of Google Map whenever a patient were to look for Acupuncture from Google Map. Another reason is to make use of the Google Analytic . The idea behind it is covered here. This is a tool to help you monitor your own website traffic.
https://www.wix.com/abcacupuncture.html but if you have your own domain name, the link would be https://www.abcacupuncture.com/
I have decided to own my own domain name, thus I went for to get one from Network Solution.The package fee is about $150 per year, including a domain name registration and a server space to upload my webpage. You can engage a webpage designer to design a webpage for you or you can design it yourself by learning a new webpage design software, which I did. The software I used is Xara. The learning curve is not too steep and it probably take you a few days to a week to familiarize with the software. A good source of teaching materials would be youtube, google and it should take no longer than 1 week to come up with a workable webpage to start with. As time goes by, whenever you need to modify your webpage, you can always do it because you are in control.
If you have chosen network solution as your provider, Xara as you webpage content builder, the next software you need is FileZilla. This is for you to upload your webpage design file onto the server. Usually after you have registered with Network Solution, they will issue you a login and password to access the FTP server. Using FileZilla, you can upload the webpage design files generated from Xara with ease. For Xara, the main thing is to export the webpage as html file before uploading, do not upload the anything that ends in .xar
After messing around with webpages, it is time to pay Google Business a visit. Create a business gmail account and login Google Business with that account. By this time you should have rented a clinic space. Fill in the information for the business. This is to allow people to look for you on Google Map. You need to make sure that you have rented a space before you begin this step because Google will send you a physical mail to verify the location of the clinic.
The reason for registering with Google Business is to allow ourselves to be in the radar of Google Map whenever a patient were to look for Acupuncture from Google Map. Another reason is to make use of the Google Analytic . The idea behind it is covered here. This is a tool to help you monitor your own website traffic.
Monday, March 10, 2014
Procedures in setting up clinic. Part 2
After all the mundane stuff, here comes the exciting part, looking for an space for the clinic. First we need to decide on the layout of the clinic. There are a few no frills version we can look into.
One Room
This is where the exam table, the office is in one room and without a waiting room. Patient would have to wait outside the clinic at the corridor. This would be the cheapest solution since this combination rarely need to exceed 250 sq of space. However, whether this type of setting would be appealing to your patient would have to be determine by you as a acupuncturist practitioner.
Two Room
This is where the office is double up as waiting room and the patient would have a private room during treatment. However during treatment when the acupuncturist is putting needles into the patient, the office/waiting room is vulnerable, easily subjected to theft.
Three Rooms
An office, a waiting room and patient room.This would be an ideal compare to the previous two layout but it would come with a higher price since the sq footage would need to be bigger, 450 sq of space minimum.
An example of a 4 room floor plan
Of course, as your practice grow you can increase the number of rooms, add a sink or even a restroom. If you need to visualize how you clinic looks to you, go Floor Planner, here you can sign in with your google account, start visualizing and designing the layout of your clinic.
Next, you would need to determine if you want your clinic to be located at a retail strip, having a store front or located within an office building. Clinic having a store front is good since it can attract walk-ins patients. The disadvantages are the rent tends to be very high, 1 to 2 times higher than an office building rent for the same square footage. More often than not, it is extremely difficult to find a store front space that is less than 1000 sq feet, which would significantly drive up the cost. Thirdly, a store front clinic also means that you have to constantly be at the clinic even if there is no patient appointment on that day.
Looking for a clinic location can be easily done through internet. Loopnet, Commercial Gateway and Showcase are some of the websites you can look for commercial properties. Alternatively, you can look for doctors, dentist, chiropractors and see if they are willing to rent out a room for you. In this case, you can save quite a huge chucks of rent, utilized the existing facilities and have some referral patient from the practitioner you are subleasing.
Once you have found a space for your clinic, beware that the sq footage is usually smaller than what is written in the contract. If the contract has written 500 sq, the size of the space is usually about 8 to 10% less, this is to cater for the hallway, escalator and common area. This is usually not properly conveyed to the tenant but the landlord agent.
Once you have the contract on hand, it would be advisable to ask a commercial property lawyer to look through, to renegotiate some of the terms and conditions that are not favorable to you. A cheaper avenue of doing this is to go online and gather some commercial property contracts, spend sometime to compare the terms and conditions, to determine what is the industry standard. When you start making changes to the contract, use the track changes functions to monitor those terms that you have change so that it can be easily conveyed to the landlord.
Usually the price per sq is not easily negotiable but you can usually as the landlord to allow early move in or to give 1 to 2 month of free rent.
After searching for a space, do not rush into signing the contract. Take the time to think through the location of the clinic, the accessibility and parking. Location of the clinic would be better if it is near the highway compare to one that is located at a local road far from the highway. Since we are in healthcare business, the patient accessibility is important, especially for wheel chair bound patient. Third, parking convenience for the patient. You have to determine if parking is ample for the patient, parking cost is bear by the patient, or free parking.
One RoomThis is where the exam table, the office is in one room and without a waiting room. Patient would have to wait outside the clinic at the corridor. This would be the cheapest solution since this combination rarely need to exceed 250 sq of space. However, whether this type of setting would be appealing to your patient would have to be determine by you as a acupuncturist practitioner.
Two Room
This is where the office is double up as waiting room and the patient would have a private room during treatment. However during treatment when the acupuncturist is putting needles into the patient, the office/waiting room is vulnerable, easily subjected to theft.
Three Rooms
An office, a waiting room and patient room.This would be an ideal compare to the previous two layout but it would come with a higher price since the sq footage would need to be bigger, 450 sq of space minimum.
An example of a 4 room floor plan
Of course, as your practice grow you can increase the number of rooms, add a sink or even a restroom. If you need to visualize how you clinic looks to you, go Floor Planner, here you can sign in with your google account, start visualizing and designing the layout of your clinic.
Next, you would need to determine if you want your clinic to be located at a retail strip, having a store front or located within an office building. Clinic having a store front is good since it can attract walk-ins patients. The disadvantages are the rent tends to be very high, 1 to 2 times higher than an office building rent for the same square footage. More often than not, it is extremely difficult to find a store front space that is less than 1000 sq feet, which would significantly drive up the cost. Thirdly, a store front clinic also means that you have to constantly be at the clinic even if there is no patient appointment on that day.
Looking for a clinic location can be easily done through internet. Loopnet, Commercial Gateway and Showcase are some of the websites you can look for commercial properties. Alternatively, you can look for doctors, dentist, chiropractors and see if they are willing to rent out a room for you. In this case, you can save quite a huge chucks of rent, utilized the existing facilities and have some referral patient from the practitioner you are subleasing.
Once you have found a space for your clinic, beware that the sq footage is usually smaller than what is written in the contract. If the contract has written 500 sq, the size of the space is usually about 8 to 10% less, this is to cater for the hallway, escalator and common area. This is usually not properly conveyed to the tenant but the landlord agent.
Once you have the contract on hand, it would be advisable to ask a commercial property lawyer to look through, to renegotiate some of the terms and conditions that are not favorable to you. A cheaper avenue of doing this is to go online and gather some commercial property contracts, spend sometime to compare the terms and conditions, to determine what is the industry standard. When you start making changes to the contract, use the track changes functions to monitor those terms that you have change so that it can be easily conveyed to the landlord.
Usually the price per sq is not easily negotiable but you can usually as the landlord to allow early move in or to give 1 to 2 month of free rent.
After searching for a space, do not rush into signing the contract. Take the time to think through the location of the clinic, the accessibility and parking. Location of the clinic would be better if it is near the highway compare to one that is located at a local road far from the highway. Since we are in healthcare business, the patient accessibility is important, especially for wheel chair bound patient. Third, parking convenience for the patient. You have to determine if parking is ample for the patient, parking cost is bear by the patient, or free parking.
Procedures in setting up clinic. Part 1
After years of study in acupuncture school, the main focus is to be a licensed acupuncturist. However after an ecstatic experience of passing all the NCCAOM exams and jurisprudence exams getting licensed, things suddenly come to an abrupt stop. How to get my clinic started? This is not taught in school, hopefully through this blog, I can shared my limited knowledge of setting up a clinic to those who are still in the process of wadding through this muddy water.
First and foremost, you need to decide what is the name of the company. The name needs to be unique and distinguishable. Have said that, this is not an easy task given that virtually every name or words under the sun has been used by some company, thus try creating a name that do not exist to make the company name unique. The company name like Kodak, Google, Facebook are all unique and can be trademark and will not infringe on someone else name, with an added bonus, it will be list top on Google search engine effortlessly. For example if I were to search for healing rock acupuncture, the name healing rock is unique enough for my main homepage to be place as the first search result. If I were to use phoenix as my clinic name, and search for phoenix acupuncture, the first few pages of the search result would not be my homepage.
After searching for a unique name, the next step is to register the company with the State. In my case would be Texas Secretary of State. There will be a bunch of forms to pick from. For most of us, it would fall into the category of LLC, Limited Liability Corporation. However, because we are setting up an acupuncturist clinic, there is a subcategory we should apply, known as the PLLC. In short means that it is a limited liability company organized for the purpose of providing professional services. Usually, professions where the state requires a license to provide services, such as a doctor, chiropractor, lawyer, accountant, architect, landscape architect, or engineer, require the formation of a PLLC. However, some states, such as California, do not permit LLCs to engage in the practice of a licensed profession. Exact requirements of PLLCs vary from state to state. Typically, a PLLC's members must all be professionals practicing the same profession. Therefore, the form we choose would be Form 206, follow the instructions.
After submitting Form 206, you should start to apply for an EIN number for the government to tax on the company. At the IRS websites, there will be tons of instructions telling us what to do but the most important thing is to apply the EIN number here. Before application, you would need to talk to a certified accountant to determine the company should be filed as a Sole Proprietor, Partner, C-Corp or S-Corp. The easiest path would be Sole Proprietor/Disregarded Entities. After these 2 forms are submitted, time to settle down for a sip of coffee and wait for reply from both institutions.
After receiving a reply from the two institution, you need to put two date in your yearly calender, March 15 for filing of the tax report to IRS; May 15 for filing Texas franchise tax report to Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.
First and foremost, you need to decide what is the name of the company. The name needs to be unique and distinguishable. Have said that, this is not an easy task given that virtually every name or words under the sun has been used by some company, thus try creating a name that do not exist to make the company name unique. The company name like Kodak, Google, Facebook are all unique and can be trademark and will not infringe on someone else name, with an added bonus, it will be list top on Google search engine effortlessly. For example if I were to search for healing rock acupuncture, the name healing rock is unique enough for my main homepage to be place as the first search result. If I were to use phoenix as my clinic name, and search for phoenix acupuncture, the first few pages of the search result would not be my homepage.
After searching for a unique name, the next step is to register the company with the State. In my case would be Texas Secretary of State. There will be a bunch of forms to pick from. For most of us, it would fall into the category of LLC, Limited Liability Corporation. However, because we are setting up an acupuncturist clinic, there is a subcategory we should apply, known as the PLLC. In short means that it is a limited liability company organized for the purpose of providing professional services. Usually, professions where the state requires a license to provide services, such as a doctor, chiropractor, lawyer, accountant, architect, landscape architect, or engineer, require the formation of a PLLC. However, some states, such as California, do not permit LLCs to engage in the practice of a licensed profession. Exact requirements of PLLCs vary from state to state. Typically, a PLLC's members must all be professionals practicing the same profession. Therefore, the form we choose would be Form 206, follow the instructions.
After submitting Form 206, you should start to apply for an EIN number for the government to tax on the company. At the IRS websites, there will be tons of instructions telling us what to do but the most important thing is to apply the EIN number here. Before application, you would need to talk to a certified accountant to determine the company should be filed as a Sole Proprietor, Partner, C-Corp or S-Corp. The easiest path would be Sole Proprietor/Disregarded Entities. After these 2 forms are submitted, time to settle down for a sip of coffee and wait for reply from both institutions.
After receiving a reply from the two institution, you need to put two date in your yearly calender, March 15 for filing of the tax report to IRS; May 15 for filing Texas franchise tax report to Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)