Caring for your patients and your finances when opening a medical practice

Are you a doctor, physiotherapist or self-employed professional in the healthcare sector? Are you about to open a medical practice but don't have a clue about the best way to manage your finances? If there are several of you in the same practice, do you only need one account? Or is it better to have more than one to make it easier to keep an eye on payments? If these are just some of the questions you're asking yourself right now, the sound advice in this article from our expert Bruno Mendes, Business Advisor Coordinator at Spuerkeess, will help clear things up.

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The benefits and drawbacks of having just one or several account(s) for your practice

Starting to practice medicine on a self-employed basis and having your own patients is gratifying after all those years of studying. However, to make sure the administration for your practice doesn't get too complicated, especially when there are several practitioners or doctors in the same practice, you need to make the right choices from day one.

1. Bruno, what administrative processes should someone expect when opening their own practice?

Before starting to practice, a doctor needs authorisation from the Health Ministry. To obtain this, one thing a doctor needs to do is meet the conditions on professional conduct, morality and good repute. The complete file is then submitted to the Medical College, which will issue its decision. The time it takes to obtain authorisation can be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months.

Good to know:

the application for authorisation from the Health Ministry can be submitted online at MyGuichet
where necessary, a business account can be opened before authorisation is obtained

Doctors who want to practice in Luxembourg must:

apply to the national health fund (“Caisse Nationale de Santé CNS”) to obtain a physician code. The doctor completes the information form and emails the dated and signed document to gefo.cns@secu.lu. The information form is available at www.cns.public.lu
register with the Joint Social Security Centre (“Centre commun de la sécurité sociale CCSS”) (CCSS)
take out professional liability insurance

and within one month of setting up their practice:

apply for inclusion on the Health Ministry's professional register www.sante.lu
apply for inclusion on the Medical College's ordinal register Collège médical

Once all these formalities have been completed, you're on the verge of opening your practice and it's time to think about how to structure your accounts.

2. What advice would you give to doctors who want to open a practice? And what type of accounts are best for their profession?

At the moment, doctors still aren't allowed to practise in the form of a company.

Even so, you can group together as an association of doctors. The idea of an association is to simplify the job, increase the availability of care and reduce organisational and business running costs. In this case, we recommend preparing an association contract.

This means that your business account will be opened in your association's name. There's no problem opening a second business account in the association's name if needed. This is often done to give access and delegate account management to the secretary of the practice. So, the association will have two accounts: an "income" account and an "expenses" account.

The "income" account is managed by the secretariat, while for reasons of discretion (e.g. wage payments etc.) the "expenses" account is managed by a doctor who is part of the association.

Spuerkeess provides a team of dedicated and highly qualified advisers to ensure you receive the best guidance on deciding what to do.
Bruno Mendes

It is possible to open a joint account for two or more doctors. Nevertheless, I recommend an association if there are several doctors, as there are more benefits to this. For example, it's always easier to add a new doctor to the association than to a joint account.

In all cases, there absolutely must be a separation between the private and professional domains.

For an individual medical practice, the situation might be as follows:

Dans le cadre d’un cabinet médical individuel, la situation pourrait se présenter de la manière suivante :

one private current account
one business current account

To make a simple and clear distinction between the two accounts, I suggest giving the business account a specific name, such as "Practice XY". The business account will handle the income and expenses of the practice.

The same principle applies to both individual practices and associations. It's also possible to open a second business account if needed, e.g. for reasons of discretion. The structure of the accounts would be as follows:

an "income" business current account to be managed by the secretariat
an "expenses" business current account to be managed by the doctor

The private account would be used as a "wage account", so to speak. The doctor can make transfers to this account from their business account to cover their personal requirements.

An "all-in-one" offer for self-employed professionals to cover every need

"All in One" from Spuerkeess is an exclusive offer! Aimed at professionals such as general practitioners, specialist doctors, dentists, physiotherapists, psychologists, pharmacists, lawyers, architects, vets, it caters to business needs as well as personal and asset-related needs.

3. What's included in the "All in One" offer from Spuerkeess?

"All in One" includes, in one single offer, exclusive and preferential pricing on everything involved in a liberal profession:

Business package (Zebra Business and/or Zebra Business Plus account)
Private package for day-to-day management (Zebra Premium account)
Loans and financing
Wealth management

4. What preferential conditions does the offer include?

Our offer includes numerous preferential conditions. Here are just a few of them:

Free Zebra Premium package
Preferential rate on loans and financing
Zero commission on financing applications when purchasing a home in Luxembourg
Preferential rate on asset management

To wrap up this interview, I'm pleased to be able to give you something of a scoop. With the experience we've gained in recent years, we aim to add even more preferential conditions to our "All in One" offer. For example, there are plans to provide payment terminals to our customers.

I'll be back in a few months to give you more information on all these upcoming extra conditions!

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