Practice Marketing

Medical Practice and the Benefits of Legal Perspective

Medical Practice and the Benefits of Legal Perspective

If you are a doctor running your own medical practice, caring for patients and managing your staff are likely to take up much of your valuable time. The last things you probably think about are the business and legal aspects of your practice. You are not alone, as most of your colleagues go through these exact hardships. However, taking a step back and looking over your practice’s performance, expectations, and goals may be exactly what you need to do in order to keep your practice healthy and thriving. Just as business demands in healthcare have risen over the years, so have legal representations for doctors just like you.

Do you know where you have placed the employment contracts? Do they still reflect the duties and responsibilities of your employees? How about the contracts from insurance companies and health plans? What about the documents that reflect your medical practice? Do they shield you from personal liability? Are they up to date? Do you count on a medical administrator to assist you in your legal obligations? According to several findings, a lack of proper documentation can greatly impact your legal rights, causing you unwanted stress and a great deal of expenses. In order to avoid the hardships that occur as a result of not having updated documents, you may want to consider a legal check-up for your medical practice.

Just as you recommend patients get regular medical check-ups, the law recommends that your medical practice undergo a regular legal check-up by an experienced attorney. The objective of a legal check-up is merely to predict and prevent future legal problems that your practice may encounter. It is an approach that involves ensuring your practice meets its legal obligations with respect to the law, your employees, and others. For instance, contracts should reflect the reality of your practice in terms of employment, revenue, medical standards, ethical standards, and legal standards. Employment contracts are associated with your expenses. Do you know for certain if you are receiving great value from your employees? Are they taking on the required duties and responsibilities? An efficient medical practice thrives on clear expectations. If your employees know what they can expect from you and they accept this, it ensures you are all on the same page.

You may also encounter conflicting situations from time to time. Overlooking and not updating documents may have significant consequences. For instance, if you have a partner and both of you have limited partnership of the practice, do you know what would happen if one of you decides to sell or retire? How about if you decide to leave your practice and enter another medical field? What would happen to your loyal patients? Abandonment is unethical, and in some states, it is even illegal. Changes or conflicting situations encountered by a business do not simply involve economic aspects, but legal aspects as well. The forces that drive such changes may affect the way business is conducted and cause unwanted problems. Some of you may even wish you could have dealt with them much more easily and less expensively. For this reason, acting consistently with your documentation and discussing matters within your legal rights ensures the nature of your practice is set and not subject to unwanted change or ramifications.

Consent is a concept of great importance when it comes to the legal aspects of a medical practice. It is viewed as a two-way approach, although it generally focuses on the protection of patients. As a healthcare professional, you may view this consent as mutual; however, recent findings suggest most patients simply view it as a necessary step towards obtaining treatment. For this reason, consent may not operate properly in cases where patients fail to understand its purpose in respect to their autonomy. Each consent form should take into account the treatment that is to be provided to the patient, as well as its risks and benefits. Since each patient has their own individual needs and expectations, you should attempt to tailor the process to each particular case. The whole range must be thoroughly explained.

While the content process as a whole forces you to disclose relevant patient information, most doctors feel it is important to exercise clinical judgment and discretion. Perhaps it is difficult to draw conclusions as to what is considered good or bad in the world of medicine, however, the influence of the law is justified on the grounds of preventing legal liability. In contemporary medical care, it may be best to understand the element of consent and focus on facilitating understanding among patients. After all, the goal here is to influence doctors and other healthcare professionals to act and encourage higher standards of care.

The size of your medical practice is less significant than the nature of your business when it comes to determining whether you would benefit from an annual legal check-up. However, it is true that the larger your practice is, the more necessary undergoing a legal check-up becomes. The benefits of such an approach include assessing your practice’s strengths and weaknesses, determining your practice’s legal framework, receiving necessary legal procedures, and responding to or anticipating changes. What’s more, your attorney will likely review the following with you:

  • The value of your practice
  • Malpractice prevention
  • Tax evaluation and projections
  • Expense evaluation and projections
  • Financial analysis
  • Risk-management analysis
  • Legal structures and considerations
  • Retirement plans
  • Expansion strategies
  • Employee roles and structures
  • Insurance policies
  • Disaster management and disaster recovery plans
  • Marketing planning
  • Buy-sell planning
  • Long-term planning
  • Succession planning
  • Exit planning

Just as undergoing a legal check-up is a defensive approach, it is also helpful in promoting long-term and succession planning. Moreover, it takes the value of your business and rates it in terms of buy-sell arrangements, insurance coverage, legal structure, and other similar points. One positive aspect of a legal check-up is recognizing what particular legal steps your practice is required to take and how to budget and address them. Most importantly, you can shield yourself from malpractice lawsuits by empowering patients to ask a doctor what it is your practice has to offer and make sure they fully comprehend the implications.

Partly due to the fact that the concept of legal perspective has not penetrated through to small and medium-sized practices, it remains an underused resource. Accordingly, such practices are the ones that will benefit the most from an annual legal check-up. No matter the size of your practice, legal check-ups are recommended in almost every situation. They can help to ensure proper management as well as represent where your practice is and where it should be at certain points in its life. A successful management plan for the legal aspects of your medical practice should include the following:

  • Cataloging the types of data and records kept within each department of your practice
  • Cataloging all computers and other hardware that contains your practice’s data information
  • Presenting retention plans thoroughly and merging them with other company policies
  • Identifying appropriate retention periods
  • Creating a plan to resolve questions and concerns when conflicts of interest arise (such as litigation)
  • Developing and implementing a records management policy
  • Performing a financial and risk-management analysis

The overall benefits of legal perspective are to help you minimize the risk of unexpected hardships that might arise in the foreseeable future due to incomplete or outdated documents, as well as legal expenses that might arise from a lawsuit or other dispute. By taking the proper steps to anticipate such potential hardships, you actively promote your medical practice in order to better serve patient questions, needs, and expectations. While practicing medicine and practicing business are two separate concepts, nowadays, the law requires you to recognize and keep track of your legal rights and responsibilities.