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The One-Stop Shop for Doctors!

December 29, 2021 by Missy Leave a Comment

After years of consulting for doctors and medical practices, Cornerstone Healthcare Consulting has built a network of highly regarded business professionals to collaborate with. When consulting, we often discover similar problems at each practice. A couple common denominators are in the areas of benefits, as well as human resources. As we tackle practice level problems, it is not unusual for us to identify individual physician problems, such as poor retirement planning or lack thereof, and more. Let’s dive in further to how we collaborate with some of these great professionals and provide solutions for physicians!

We recently coined the term, One-Stop Shop for Doctors! As a physician centric healthcare consulting company, we seek to provide solutions to physicians whether they are a solo practitioner, employed by a group, and/or own their own practice. We could provide examples for how we are assisting physicians in each of these areas of employment. Whether it is to manage their social media, providing them brand identity as a hospital employee, to open them a practice, or fix an existing one, we can do it all. And in the areas, we may not have the skillset or expertise to provide, we can facilitate solutions through top professionals within what we call the Cornerstone Network.

When consulting for medical practices, employee benefits is regularly an area in need of repair. The two areas of benefits we have found big savings in are the retirement plan, as well as health plan. Typically, what happens is the practice selects a broker relationship in both these areas years prior. Over time, the brokers earn a commission for essentially doing nothing. Annually, health plan premiums go up, and practices just accept that as a norm and move on, and the retirement plan goes under the radar, without regard to what percentage rate the practice is paying, how the investments are doing, etc. When providing healthcare consulting services, Cornerstone reviews everything; the practice owners are shocked by the findings. We have discovered practices paying over 2% on their retirement plans, egregious TPA costs, inappropriate employee fees, etc. One private practice, we saved them close to $40,000 on their retirement plan!

When reviewing practice health plans, we could take the easy route and just look for lower cost options, but that isn’t really providing a solution. Instead, we take a hard look at the practice size and opportunities that exist as a result. For example, one practice was large enough to become partially self-funded in the State of New York. As a result, they were scheduled to save as much as $30,000 in the first year, and no less than $8,000. Each year, as they better understood their annual expenditure, they could become more aggressive in their risk and potential savings.

Planned Futures Financial is who Cornerstone collaborates with to tackle medical practice retirement plans. In working with Planned Futures Financial, they also review the practice’s Group Life and Disability Insurance, as well as whether a practice has buy-sell insurance. We regularly discover that most practice owners have no idea what buy-sell insurance is, and upon learning about it, wish they had started a policy years prior. Although buy-sell insurance is necessary, before purchasing a policy there should be a succession plan in place. Sadly, most practices we have consulted for have avoided the topic of succession planning, and it regularly becomes a topic for debate. There are many pieces of advice we could provide to a physician considering becoming a partner in a practice, but one of the most important things we could tell you, is to ensure there is a succession plan first. Each specialty has their uniqueness as well. For example, within an OBYN practice it is important to discuss how partners are treated financially once they stop doing obstetrics. These conversations are important early on, as many times they do not end positively if discussed later. Need a good healthcare attorney to support you in these discussions? We have that relationship as well! If employee benefits are being reviewed, it is imperative to also review your human resource department entirely. Often time, we see practices without job descriptions for their staff, or job descriptions that are paper written and haven’t been updated in more than ten years. If the job descriptions haven’t been updated or are non-existent, the employee benefits manual is also either in severe need for an update or non-existent. It’s always baffling to us how practices are hiring without either a job description or an employee manual. It’s inappropriate and there is nothing to hold staff accountable. As you may have assumed, we unfortunately discover these practices have toxic employees that have contributed to many of their organizational problems, but the practice has no process for disciplining them and/or terminating them. Therefore, they are allowed to continue to spread toxicity, of which invariably leads to other toxic employees joining them.

Has your medical practice had a check-up lately? Just having us review an expense report could save you thousands of dollars! Or maybe your practice is in great shape, but you’re unsure if you yourself have the best retirement planning in place, or proper disability insurance. Or maybe your practice is running smoothly but has no idea how to market on social media. Or maybe you’re a physician who is employed by a hospital, needing help with maintaining your own brand identity, and how to market that. Whatever it is, we can help! Click here to visit our website to learn more about our healthcare consulting services and schedule a consult!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: #checkup, #doctor, #employeebenefits, #healthcareconsulting, #healthinsurance, #humanresources, #marketing, #physician, #retirementplanning, #socialmedia

Planning for Retirement As a New Doctor

April 1, 2021 by wpcornerstone

In this interview, Melissa (Missy) Marsocci of Cornerstone Healthcare Consulting, interviewed Alex Heringer and Jim Ginnane of Planned Futures Financial, located in Buffalo, New York. There were three main questions Missy posed to Jim and Alex. They were as follows:

  1. How important is disability insurance for a physician? What if I am just graduating Residency, is this something I need right now?
  2. I am just graduating Residency; I am in my late 20’s/early 30’s with lots of debt. Is it possible for me to plan for retirement with all my debt, and just finally starting to make money?
  3. Any tips on how to manage all that debt?

Clearly, the theme surrounded the topic of debt. With the need to complete an undergraduate program, and then attend medical school, becoming a physician will likely begin with a six-digit investment. Therefore, how is it possible to take on additional expenses, that may seem irrelevant to a young physician graduating Residency, who often is in their late 20’s/early 30’s? Thus, the relevance of the question, “How important is disability insurance for a physician?” Especially one in the above referenced age bracket. But, as Alex and Jim would likely express back to us…how can you afford not to? Jim began by saying, “…if they analyze it carefully they’ll

usually come to the conclusion that their ability to work and earn a paycheck is the biggest asset they’ll ever own”. If that didn’t capture your attention, he further went on to drive this message home by saying, “All the automobiles and homes and schooling and everything else that they’re ever going to purchase in their life is all predicated on their ability to earn a paycheck. So, I can’t think of anything that’s more important for somebody to insure. And the doctors and dentists and the professionals that we specialize in working with are particularly vulnerable, because they have the ability to command a very high income but at the same time they have the possibility of getting disabled no differently than anybody else, and so the drop of income, the difference in what their income would be if they if they got disabled and all they had was social security for instance, for disability insurance, so they didn’t have any personally owned disability insurance, that drop in income is dramatic for a person that’s making you know $80,000 a year, but the social security will provide a bigger percentage of their pay if they get disabled, but it doesn’t work that way for high income people”. Jim’s response answered the question of whether disability insurance is important. But is it affordable? The good news is, similar to life insurance, the younger and healthier you are, the less expensive it is. Alex said they actually have starter packages for disability insurance and have many clients who purchased the insurance before Residency, in their fourth year of medical school. He further went on to explain some of the specifics around pricing, as well as the discounts they have through their existing relationships with medical schools throughout the country. So, is disability insurance important? Yes. And is it affordable? Yes.

With all the discussion surrounding affordability and debt, it seemed only appropriate to then talk about how to manage that debt, and question if it is possible to plan for retirement, when just coming out of Residency. Although most residents would fall in the category of being in their late 20’s/early 30’s, and that is still quite young, they are beyond the age of when most financial advisors would recommend starting to plan for retirement. However, with all this debt to manage and just finally making money, how is that possible? It is, through what Jim calls the 85-15 rule. He described it as this, “If a person can discipline themselves to live on 85% of their gross income, therefore free up 15% of the gross income to put away for the future, but then it reduces the importance of where the money is invested, and if you time it with the time where someone has a dramatic increase in their income, it’s very easy to do actually because these young doctors are used to earning next to nothing, and then all of a sudden they get a decent income. And so, if they can start with that thought in mind that I’m going to live on 85% and put 15% away for my future, then it’s still a huge net pay increase from what they were used to.

And so, it makes it as painless as it can be and at the same time the indebtedness can be paid off over a period of time and that can be done concurrently with planning for their retirement”. He went on to further explain the important of starting early, and the cost if you do not.

In closing, an important question was posed to Jim and Alex; “Where is your favorite place to eat in Buffalo”? To gain the answer, as well as so many additional details to what was discussed, you will have to click to watch this great interview!

Interested to learn more about Planned Futures Financial Group? Click here to visit their website!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: #alexheringer, #buffalony, #disabilityinsurance, #doctor, #employeebenefits, #healthcareconsulting, #howtoaffordretirementplanning, #jimginnane, #medicalresidency, #plannedfuturesfinancial, #retirementplanning, medicalstudents

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