Financing Options for Medical Professionals

Almost every doctor who decides to start their practice qualifies for an array of loans, as their earning potential is high and as they can have stable revenue flows. While this can appear extremely difficult, there exist several loan options for the professional.

For instance, what the SBA offers is among the many different types of loans optimal for the said professionals. It will mostly provide the best rate of interest in a loan scheme, which will lead to lower periodic payments and will offer longer pay-back schedules.

Additionally, SBA’s loan comes with heavy paperwork, as well as an approval procedure that could entail 2 to 3 months of waiting for the loan to be processed. When you can wait that long and are potentially eligible for the loan, that is a very good option. The following chart demonstrates the distinctions between it and alternative lending.

Working Capital (WC) Loan for Medical Professionals

Work capital is required for any business, which includes medical practices, particularly at the start. If you lack patients, the cash flow could be in the negative for a lengthy period.

Slow-paying insurers, Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement delays, and patients who are short of money can damage your cash flow. On the other hand, you must pay workers and purchase medical supplies and tools, plus malpractice insurance expenses will keep increasing.

Alternative lending providers such as Fundrly will help to arrange the said capital for doctor offices through a type of financing which can reduce their cash crunch. Fundrly specializes in doctor loans that fit an array of financing requirements for medical practices.

What Do You Want The Healthcare Practice Financing For?

Today’s business loans are also designed for healthcare practices. For instance, you would possibly utilize a financing arrangement designed for equipment purchase that is different from the one for real estate acquisition. Likewise, you would possibly use a form of loan for your first insurance premiums, which is different from the one for your medical practice’s working capital costs.

With that in mind, let us look at the different forms of loan, who is eligible for these, and in what way to position a medical practice for the optimal loan rates. Besides, there may be varying interest rates and repayment terms in the kind of loan you may receive. The difference is sometimes likely to range up to $20,000 to $100,000 or more, in savings/ additional costs.

Is an individual giving you financial advice? If yes, ask them questions regarding the many different loan forms, while basing your evaluation on the following. When deciding without a financial advisor’s help, base your research on the following guide, plus ask your likely lender(s) regarding their differing loan schemes.

A Quick Look at Physician Loans: Defining The Utilization Of Medical Practice Loans

Recruiting People

Physicians turn to their workers to ensure that their offices operate seamlessly. Some of these workers are physician’s assistants, receptionists, nurses, and administrative assistants who aid in billing health insurers, Medicare, and other third parties. Doctors tend to need cash infusions when launching medical practices, expanding these practices, or opening offices. Insurance carriers can take time to pay, argue about claims, and attempt to negotiate insurance rates.

When working out the staffing budget you require, make sure to include worker tax responsibilities, as well as benefits. This is usually a further 17% to 22% of their workers’ salary which employers must legally pay.

Are you a solo medical practitioner who expects to have patients right through the day? If yes, you would possibly require not just support staff to handle scheduling, invoicing/collections, and bookkeeping but also an assistant or nurse.

Cash flow problems can emerge from these costs and occasional medical practice expansion. The above situation is likely to happen in new medical practices, so physicians must plan for it.

For this kind of medical financing, you may seek a business credit line. The credit line is like ‘ready money’ that a borrower can utilize immediately after having access to it. In this regard, it is quite like a standard credit card scheme, which comes with a predefined credit amount for the borrower. The credit line is usually called a working capital/ general purpose loan, plus it is useable for any cause.

With the credit line, you will pay interest just on the money you withdraw. The distinction between the money you could take from an ATM with your credit card and the credit line is in the interest levied. There are usually lofty interest rates on the card cash withdrawal.

Fundrly supplies many different physician loan products, which include business loans, cash advances, and credit lines. These products can allow hiring the staff required for efficient medical practice operation.

Digitalizing Patient Records

Turning the patient paperwork from analog to digital form can result in excellent efficiencies for not just health care providers but also their patients. Anyhow, the above process accounts for the total digitalization cost to a small extent.

Digitalization will possibly necessitate medical practices to sign up for web hosts, purchase software, and bear the cost of educating workers on using modern technologies. Several software providers will offer basic-level education, but this training tends to be insufficient and require medical practices to sign a further training and support agreement.

There are clear digitalization advantages regarding patient care. Digitalizing the paperwork produces a record of patient visits, examinations, blood trials, diagnoses, and prescription drugs that physicians could share between them if required. Making computerized health records is likely to be a lifesaving endeavor.

Utilizing the digital records shrinks not just labor and file folder costs but paper costs as well. The efficiencies achieved through merely researching patient records, reduce space and precious time while saving costs for both hospitals and medical practices. Anyhow, it takes a considerable investment from medical offices to digitize the records for the long term. Conversion costs tend to range up to $100,000 or even more. Fundrly can aid doctors in securing the money that they require to make digital medical files.

Why Does Digitalizing Medical Records Matter?

As per the security services provider, GlobalSign, these are the four primary reasons to do it.

1. Easier Medical Record Storage

The process of storing patient files is very specialized, plus it must adhere to federal guidelines and should be done confidentially. There are alternative logistical challenges in storing the records, which include holding and sorting these, quality assurance (QA), plus effectively and punctually retrieving them.

Turning files into an EMR system means not just staff having immediate data access and capability of cross-referencing, but also reducing the requirement for physical data storage.

2. Gradual Cost Savings

An EMR system is possibly expensive, plus the training related to learning the way of managing the software can cost the same as the software or more. Anyhow, after it is securely deployed, your practice might just be streamlined, be working with less staff and office space. This might lead to not just cost savings but also the capability to offer care to many more people.

3. Security

Keeping physical records invites the possibility of data loss. The said records are usually not routinely reproduced, plus a catastrophe could result in these being lost forever. When it comes to cloud hosting, the documents are not just encrypted but also stored on remote servers situated at different places. Cloud hosting results in the files being accessible through a one-of-a-kind login process that can decrypt these documents.

4. Precision And Readability

Physical, hand-written files can cause confusion on numerous levels. It is not possible to identify unclear medical records, particularly when their actual author is nowhere to be found. When the number of medical malpractice lawsuits keeps mounting, having precise records will help to clear misconceptions concerning these events, and it may help qualify your practice for lower premiums.

Buy Equipment

Almost every medical office must purchase equipment units, including lasers, surgical tools, wheelchairs, defibrillators, and so forth.

People refer almost all laboratory- and diagnosis-related tasks to specialized companies, but medical tools like diagnostic devices, software, and machinery are likely to be too costly.

Fundrly can assist doctors in getting financing for every kind of medical tool. Bear in mind that equipment loan amounts are useable to not just purchase expensive products but also help cover capital expenditures (CapEx). You can utilize the bought asset as collateral for a medical equipment loan, and the financial product has a lower interest rate than certain other kinds of loans. For your information, here, the word ‘collateral’ refers to the piece of equipment that you will purchase, and then pledge to protect the lender's interest.

Opening New Medical Offices

As with any other business owner, professionals such as dentists, doctors, accountants, and lawyers have financial requirements. For example, physicians tend to have cash flow problems due to not only reimbursements involving disputes but also slow-paying insurers. There is also the lofty medical record digitalization cost, ever-growing rates for malpractice insurance, and the mounting medical practice operational costs. All of the above can leave physicians in a fiscal tight spot.

There can be big start-up expenses for the new offices. Physicians who have either bought/ renovated buildings or got into lease contracts should realize that it is costly to establish a location. Then there are the acquisitions of software, computers, and other physical devices; the spending on establishing phone and EMR systems; marketing expenses; and, staffing costs.

Fundrly can aid in securing business financing for doctors looking for office acquisitions and leasing contracts, plus we can offer various working capital financing options for the new offices.