Business Tip: Income Goals

Come January 1st, most people start thinking about their goals for the coming year. Goals are a big deal however... and I think waiting until the end of December or into January is a bit late to get started. Now is the time to really starting thinking about and writing down your personal and business goals for 2010.

I've written rather generically about this before, however, let's get more specific by talking about income goals.

In order to consider income goals, let's consider the following questions:

* How much time do you want off in 2010?

* Subtract the weeks off from the 52. That gives you how many weeks in the year you'll be working. Also deduct time for CME.

* What is your desired gross income?

* Take the gross amount and divide it into how many days you'll be working. For example, if you will be working 48 weeks (that means 6 weeks off for holidays, CME, vacation), that gives you 240 working days (assuming 5 days per week)

* If you want to gross $100,000, you will have to gross $417.00 per working day.

* From there you will be able to figure out how many patients you will need to see each day with an average reimbursement rate. For example, 8 patients with an average reimbursement of $50 would be 8.34 patients per day.

Obviously this example is just looking at gross income. What you need to focus on is the net income - gross income minus overhead. If you know your estimated overhead, you'll easily see where you can make adjustments in order to meet your financial goals.