What Doctors Need to Do When Closing Their Medical Practice for Good
When you close your practice, there are many things to take into consideration. You need to think about yourself, your patients, your employees and others who are impacted by your decision.
Here are just a few of the steps that need to be taken when you are looking to close your practice:
Notify Your Patients
Perhaps the most important part of the process is notifying your current patients that you will be retiring. You need to give them adequate notice to find new doctors before you close your doors. The more warning you can give them, the better. Also, make sure that they have copies of their medical records and that you suggest a few possible replacements for you. Your patients trust you and will look for referrals when selecting a new doctor.
Notify the Landlord / Property Owner
If you do not own the property or building that your practice operates from, you will need to let the landlord or property owner know that you are planning to vacate. This gives them adequate time to find a new lease and keeps you from being roped into a new contract.
Notify Your Employees
When you are going to close your practice, it is essential that you notify your employees. Employees should be the first to know that you are planning to close your doors. This gives them adequate time to get their resumes out there and to look for new work. Even better is if you can talk to new doctors coming into the area and potentially set your current nurses and administrative staff up with possible new jobs.
Call Your Insurance Provider
You know all about insurance seeing as it costs you thousands of dollars every year. Thankfully, that will no longer be an expense that you need to incur once you close up your practice. However, you will want to call and discuss everything with your insurance provider. They might recommend keeping certain coverage for a bit longer after you retire.
Sort Out the Handling of Medical Records
Medical records are sensitive information and how you handle them is governed by HIPAA, federal and state regulations. It is important that you stay complaint through retirement and that means storing, shredding and scanning records according to law. However, this can be a complicated and time sensitive task that most doctors don’t want to deal with on top of the other items on their retirement “to-do” list.
If You Need Help Handling Documents When Closing Your Practice, Datafied Can Help!
Many of the steps to closing your medical practice can be done with a simple phone call or conversation. Unfortunately, with the strict HIPAA regulations that dictate how you handle sensitive medical records, you need to be a bit more careful. Thankfully, Datafied is here to help! If you need assistance scanning, shredding, or storing your old medical records, we can be of assistance.
