The End-of-Day Report: Financial Control for Your Medical Practice

It is important that physicians establish certain financial control routines. Making your staff conform to these routines will have the following benefits:
• It establishes the physician as being the controller for the practice. In a group practice, one physician should be designated as “Dr. Financial” for similar responsibilities.
• It makes staff conform to routines that are reasonable, and just plain “good business”
• It curbs sloppy bookkeeping methods

One simple control is the End-of-Day Report. It should be the requirement of every practice that this report be presented to the solo physician or “Dr. Financial” at the end of the business day. Your computer system will be able to generate the report, at the completion of the day’s entries into the accounts receivable system.

The End-Of-Day Report should be put on the designated physician’s desk at the end of each business day. It should not be carried over to the next day, except in an emergency. Putting emphasis on this procedure establishes that there is a financial reporting requirement that must be met. This is not a casual exercise, to be completed at the discretion of the involved staff.

Additionally, a copy of the bank deposit slip, generated by your computer, should be attached to the Report. The bank deposit slip should match the “Payments” total of the Report.

With the requirement of this report, practice physicians can feel more confident that there is little room for manipulation of the financial reports of the practice, which could be covering up embezzlement.

The basic data to be presented at day’s end is illustrated in the following exhibit:

Click on the image for a downloadable PDF document.

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