Identify profitable activities in your practice. Seeing patients is obviously a profitable activity. Some patients not all of them. Seeing the patients that can bring you the most revenue is a choice you must make if you are struggling to meet payroll.

If you are only concerned about the well-being of your patients and not the profitability of your practice, that is your choice.

But if your practice is not profitable, at some point you may not be able to stay in practice. And that is of no help to anyone. Some patients (and the procedures you perform on those patients) are more profitable than others.

Unlike other businesses, as a doctor or other healthcare provider, you have several unique challenges that cause tight cash flow... as well as some outright leaks. Even practices that are seen as highly successful can feel the strain of cash flow problems.

Critical Cash Gaps can be triggered before and after a claim is filed when the following things happen in your practice: Not enough patient appointments, failure to check eligibility, failure to double check patient information, inaccurate or incomplete superbill, no shows and several other factors can effect your cash flow.

This confirms that the way the healthcare system is currently structured doctors are almost guaranteed to experience cash flow problems.

Blaming insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid is easy to do. But practices also contribute to these problems. But there is hope! There are ways to speed up payments, collect more of what you're owed and plug the "internal bleeding" caused within your own office.