With this in mind, here are some areas of the practice to audit:

• Existing sources of revenue, with an eye towards developing new revenue-generating ideas
• Compliance solutions
• Website design and development
• Solutions for minimizing overhead costs
• Providing top-quality medical care

Auditing your practice requires certain tools.  For example, you should start with a goal worksheet, a timeline worksheet, and a plan worksheet.  Let’s look at goals first.

Your goal worksheet should list five or six specific goals for auditing your practice.  The above items can serve as goals; you may also come up with some areas that are particular to your practice.  List the reason(s) that each goal is important for your practice, as well as objectives – steps you will take to achieve each goal.  It’s a good idea to conceptualize each goal in terms of who, what, when, where, and why so you think of all the ways to approach achievement of each one.  As you audit your practice, you can refine your goals and determine which ones will receive first priority.

Deciding which goals should receive first priority is the reason you need to create a timeline for each goal.  Your timeline worksheet will help you decide which goal to work on at what time.  This is very important when you have multiple goals you’re trying to achieve at the same time; a chronological list of your objectives allows you to make progress on each without continually reviewing your goal worksheet, as well as plan expenditures.

Planning expenditures for your goals is the purpose of the next worksheet – the budget worksheet.  This is of critical importance, not just for keeping your expenses in check but to help you determine your return on investment (ROI) at the end of each project.  After all, if your ROI isn’t a positive number, there was no purpose in pursuing new goals in an effort to implement cost-cutting or revenue-enhancing ideas.  Be as realistic as possible when determining your budget for each goal so you’ll have all the information you need to make a good decision about whether or not to pursue the goal at each stage of the process.

Keeping track of your accomplishments at each stage of the process is the reason for creating the last worksheet, which entails creating a plan for completion of each goal.  This plan encompasses all of the above elements: each new goal (incorporating the results of the audit), the timeline, and the budget.  The plan for completion allows you to document the entire project at a glance and provides an excellent resource for reporting on the results of your audit.