Effective administration management for doctors: the drawbacks of employing your partner

This year’s WAAG Conference in Bali was an excellent opportunity for anaesthetists and surgeons to gain insights from presenters across various specialties.

And the location wasn’t bad either.

In talking to attendees of the conference regarding their administration processes, I discovered that a common theme was emerging. Given how often I heard very similar stories, it led me to believe that you may also be running your practice in this way and as a result, I wanted to share the outcome of these discussions with you.

The recurring observation was that many private practicing anaesthetists like you, say that they do their own billing – which is actually code for ‘my partner does it’. It was remarkable how often this was mentioned, which was troubling for numerous reasons.

The first reason is that they’re not really removing the burden of administration at all – it’s just being passed onto another family member. One of the main benefits of taking administration off your plate is that you get to spend more time with family, so employing a family member to take on this burden does not solve this problem.

Secondly, an alternative accounts resource is only considered once the spouse reaches breaking point – that is, they get fed up with how much time is consumed processing their partner’s accounts (which increases with the more work you take on) and grow to resent the task. Unfortunately I’ve seen this situation unfold many times and it doesn’t make for a productive working relationship.

To help manage these problems, you can assist your partner by outsourcing the billing aspect of your practice, while they continue to manage everything else to manage your practice. The advantage of this is:

• You help to alleviate their work load;
• The remaining workload still justifies having your partner involved; and
• You maintain your tax advantage associated with this type of employment.

Many of our clients enjoy the benefits of this setup. Not only does your partner have more time to manage their workload and your practice, but you can also take on more work without having to worry about the additional pressure this puts on your partner.

If your partner currently owns the responsibility of processing your accounts, then you may value a conversation about how you can help reduce this burden, to ensure your working relationship is nurtured effectively and to ensure not too much of your quality family time is spent discussing work.