What Assets Should a Physician Protect?
When considering what kinds of assets you may need to protect, you will probably think of your home, your savings and investments, and maybe your medical practice. It is indeed important to protect those, but that’s just the beginning.
I have found that when clients put down ALL of their assets on a piece of paper, they are quite surprised at how much needs to be protected. Here is a more comprehensive (though by no means complete) list of things you may need to protect:
Family Home or Condominium
Rental Property
Non-Rental Property
IRAs
Stocks or Mutual Funds
Life Insurance
Bank Accounts or CDs
Planes, Boats, Automobiles, Motorcycles
Other business entity (especially S or C-Corp stock)
Any collectible items that have value
Future Inheritance for Family
Accounts Receivable (at the medical practice)
The last item may surprise you, especially since medical practices themselves are worth very little to a personal injury attorney trying to satisfy a judgment for medical malpractice. Most of the value in a medical practice is in the good will, which really is you, the physician, and the relationship you have built over the years with your patients and the community. In other words, the ONLY major asset of a medical practice that is not protected is the office’s accounts receivable (A/R).
What this means for you is that you must protect the accounts receivable of your medical practice. For specific information about how to do that, please turn to page 91 of _______________, where you can read about A/R leveraging.
