An accountant offers a number of specialty services which are unique to medical practices. This person can set up and advise you in setting up your bookkeeping system whether you have a bookkeeper or not. Accounting firms can offer bookkeeping services well for your practice. On a long-term basis, they will prepare the tax returns for the practice itself. For a group practice, I generally advise that the physicians have their own accountant for their personal purposes and there be a separate person with a background and expertise in medical practices to work with the practice organization itself.

On a monthly basis, no less than a quarterly basis, your accountant should review with you your financial statement for the practice, point out areas of concern, areas of where things are going very well and areas where there might be some opportunities for your practice. Accountants very often can provide good general business advice for a growing organization. Look at your overall financial picture, both where you are and to plan and prepare for your future, whether it looks like you’ll be needing debt capability and lending from the bank, perhaps raise more capital from the owners of the practice, the different options available.

Lastly, look at payroll and payroll taxes. These are the taxes which were withheld from the employee paychecks, which include your own as well as the portion paid by the employer themselves, which include FICA as an example. All these must be paid to the Internal Revenue Service on a timely basis. There is a tight schedule. You cannot fail to miss that because there are penalties involved. This isn’t your money, by the way. So never ever fail to make those payments. I’d recommend that you use a payroll service. They specialize and worry about nothing else in life except payroll and there’s enough specialty areas, enough intricacies that they’ll take care of it and relieve that kind of worry for you. They’re fairly inexpensive. They’ll take care of the W2 forms. They’ll take care of all those forms that need to be filed and they’ll do it generally very efficiently and for much less cost than you would think.