Medical & Dental Practices
Healthcare practices where insurance reimbursement cycles and high overhead require precise financial tracking.
The Industry
You went through years of clinical training to become a dentist, chiropractor, optometrist, or physician. Somewhere along the way you decided to open your own practice. Now you have a building to pay for, staff to manage, equipment loans, supply orders, and a stack of insurance claims that take 60 days to pay. Nobody covers this in dental school or medical school.
Healthcare practices have a specific accounting challenge. You bill a patient $400 for a procedure. Insurance pays $280 three weeks later. The patient owes $45 but never pays it. You write off $75 as a contractual adjustment. Your books need to track all of that and tell you what actually happened. Most practices know roughly what came in last month but can’t tell you their real collection rate or how much revenue is sitting unpaid in aging receivables.
Who This Covers
Who This Covers
Dental practices, chiropractic offices, optometry clinics, primary care physicians, dermatologists, physical therapists, and specialty medical offices across Scottsdale and the greater Phoenix area. Solo practitioners and practices with multiple providers or locations.
What Complicates It
What Complicates It
Insurance reimbursement with different payer rates and 30-90 day payment delays. Expensive equipment that needs proper capitalization and depreciation. Staff payroll that might include hygienists, assistants, front desk, and associate providers. Patient balances that go unpaid. Write-offs and contractual adjustments that obscure what you actually collected.
What We Handle
Revenue tracking for healthcare practices requires separating what you billed from what you collected. Your practice management software handles claims but doesn’t always communicate cleanly with your accounting system. We reconcile deposits to insurance payments to patient payments so you know exactly what came in. Contractual adjustments and write-offs get categorized properly instead of just reducing the revenue number with no explanation.
The balance sheet needs attention too. Equipment worth $50,000 or more should be capitalized and depreciated over its useful life, not expensed entirely in the year of purchase. Accounts receivable aging tells you how much is outstanding and how long it’s been sitting there. Payroll handles multiple job types and pay structures. We keep the back office organized so you can focus on patient care instead of chasing numbers at night.
Revenue and Collections
Revenue and Collections
Insurance payments reconciled to what was billed. Patient copays and balances tracked. Write-offs and adjustments categorized so you can calculate your actual collection rate. Reports that show what you billed, what you collected, and what’s still outstanding by payer and patient.
Equipment and Overhead
Equipment and Overhead
Proper capitalization and depreciation schedules for expensive medical and dental equipment. Overhead costs tracked so you understand what it takes to keep the doors open each month. Payroll managed for staff with different roles and compensation structures. Clean books that give you control over the business side of your practice.
What Goes Wrong
Collection rates hide in the gap between billing and deposits. You send out $80,000 in claims. Something close to $55,000 shows up in the bank over the next two months. The difference is contractual adjustments, denials, patient no-pays, and timing. Most practices don’t reconcile this precisely. They look at the bank balance and assume things are fine until suddenly cash is tight and nobody can explain why. Without tracking the full cycle from charge to collection, you’re guessing at the health of your practice.
Accounts receivable aging gets ignored because there’s no system to review it. Claims from six months ago are still sitting open. Patient balances of $40 and $75 add up to thousands in uncollected revenue that should have been followed up on months ago. Equipment purchased for $35,000 gets expensed in full instead of depreciated, throwing off your income statement and creating potential issues when your accountant prepares taxes. These problems accumulate quietly until tax season or a cash crunch forces you to deal with them all at once.
Collection Rate Unknown
Collection Rate Unknown
What percentage of billed charges do you actually collect? Most practice owners guess. The real number requires reconciling claims to payments to adjustments over time. Without tracking that, you don’t know if your fee schedule makes sense or if something is broken in your billing and follow-up process.
Receivables Pile Up
Receivables Pile Up
Old insurance claims and patient balances sit open because nobody reviews them systematically. A $35 patient balance seems small until you have 200 of them. Denials don’t get appealed. Patients don’t receive statements. The receivables report grows while actual cash collected stays flat or declines.
What Changes
You see your real collection rate and can have honest conversations about whether your fees are appropriate and whether your billing process is performing. Monthly financials show what actually happened, not just what was billed. Accounts receivable gets reviewed regularly so aging balances get attention before they become uncollectible. You stop being surprised by cash flow and start understanding the patterns.
Equipment shows up properly on the balance sheet with depreciation schedules that make sense for tax purposes. Overhead costs are clear so you know what it takes to run the practice each month. When tax season arrives, your books are organized and your accountant can focus on strategy instead of cleanup. You spend less time worrying about the numbers and more time doing the clinical work you trained for.
Financial Clarity
Financial Clarity
Monthly statements that reflect reality. Collection rates calculated from actual data instead of assumptions. Aging receivables reviewed and addressed before they go stale. You know which insurance payers are consistently slow and which patient balances need follow-up this week.
Practice Operations
Practice Operations
Equipment properly tracked and depreciated. Overhead understood so you know your break-even point. Payroll handled for your team. Books clean and ready for tax prep. The back office runs smoothly so you can focus on what you actually went to school for.
Full-Service Bookkeeping for Greater Phoenix
The Next Step:
A Quick Conversation
Tell us about your situation. We'll listen, ask a few questions, and give you a clear price to handle the work.