National Preparedness Month: Is Your Practice Financially Ready for an Emergency?

September is National Preparedness Month. For a chiropractic practice in Louisiana, a hurricane or flood does not just close the doors for a few days. Adjustments stop, insurance claims stall, and payroll for your front desk and associates still comes due. The practices that reopen fastest are the ones that prepared their finances, not just their building, before the storm.

Protect the records you would need to restart

After a storm, you need two sets of records: your patient and billing history, and your financial books. If either lives on a single office computer or in a filing cabinet, a flood can take it. Confirm your practice management or EHR system is backed up off site, and keep your books in a cloud system such as Xero so your financial history is reachable from anywhere.

Keep insurance money moving while the doors are closed

Payers that pay you by electronic funds transfer keep paying even if the office is closed, as long as your enrollment and bank details are current. Check that each major payer is set up for EFT and electronic remittance, and know who on your team can log in to post payments remotely. Paper checks mailed to a damaged office are the ones that get lost.

Know how long you could cover payroll

Add up a month of fixed costs: front desk and associate payroll, rent, equipment leases, and software. Compare that to your reserve. The same reserve that carries you through a slow season also carries you through a closure, which is one more reason to build it before you need it.

Have your proof of normal revenue ready

If you carry business interruption coverage, the insurer will want to see what the practice normally collects and spends. Disaster loan programs ask for financial statements too. Clean monthly profit and loss statements for the past one to two years, with collections broken out by payer and cash-pay, make that case quickly. Ask your insurance agent now what a claim would require, so you are not guessing after the fact.

Write down who does what

Keep a one-page list with your bank, payroll provider, practice management vendor, insurance agent, and bookkeeper, plus logins stored in a secure password manager. In an emergency, the practice that knows who to call reopens faster.

You cannot control when the next storm comes. You can control whether your practice's finances are ready for it.

Jeremy Brewer is the founder of 911 Bookkeepers LLC in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 911 Bookkeepers partners with MBJA Accounting Service to give chiropractic and MDVIP practices clean, current financials. He is a Xero Certified Advisor.