Doctors - How To Take The Headache Out Of Paperwork

Paperwork! For most people, form filling is not high on their enjoyment list. Neither is trying to navigate the various requirements across different States and health services. That’s where we come in.

“At Prescript, our aim is to ensure the highest standards with credentialing, customer service and recruitment processes are adhered to. I want to make life easier for the doctors and clients that we work with.”

Any doctor who has worked in more than two locations (and that’s most doctors) will agree that it can be such a pain completing various documents, online checks and making sure everything is still valid in the process. I often have conversations with our doctors about these differing requirements, and I know it is a cause for great frustration.

However, there is some credentialing paperwork that is broadly required across most health services. Because of this, we have created our own checklist - Prescript Quality Standards (PQS).

PQS has three main benefits:

➝ Hospitals, clinics and practices can have peace of mind that each Prescript doctor has met a consistent level of background checks.

➝  Doctors can rely on PQS to help their applications stand out, plus minimise paperwork duplication.

➝   Internally, we use PQS to judge when a doctor is ‘job ready’ - only doctors who have met the Prescript Quality Standards can start in a new position.

“Because all of our clients have their own different, yet overlapping, credentialing, we thought it essential that we can rely on our own foundation of standards.”

What is part of our PQS checklist?

✓ PQS Prescript Interview Report - with one of our medical recruitment partners

✓ PQS Registered with Prescript as a candidate

✓ PQS Answered disclosure questions

✓ PQS Medical Board Registration checked

✓ PQS Shared a copy of driving licence and passport

✓ PQS Provided proof of qualifications - Primary Degree and Fellowship

✓ PQS CV updated for recent work history

✓ PQS Right to work checked (citizenship and visas)

✓ PQS Google keyword search

✓ PQS Three reference reports (two as a minimum)

What is not part of our PQS checklist?

[These can be location specific and requested by the health service]

➝  Working with children checks

➝  Police clearance reports

➝  Immunisation/vaccination evidence

What Does This Mean For You?

Removing the headache of paperwork is our key driver - doctors can rely on Prescript to keep admin to the minimum, yet at the same time know that we take quality and standards seriously.

If you’d like to work with us, or simply want to join our network, just connect with Prescript by clicking the button below - we’d love to hear from you!

Connect With Prescript

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About Stef McLaughlin

Stef is Prescript’s Credentialing, Quality & Giving Manager, working with regional hospitals and practices across Australia to ensure that doctors start on time. Stef is responsible for Prescript’s quality management processes and our giving relationship with the Buy1Give1 programme.

There are three ways to contact Stef:

1. Call Stef on 0416 544 577

2. Email stef@prescript.com.au

3. Click 'Connect with Prescript'

Connect With Prescript

“Paperwork, credentialing and travel logistics can sometimes be such a headache! My role is to ease the pain and guide all our doctors through the process. Hopefully the hospitals, clinics and doctors I work with feel they are well supported by me and the Prescript team”

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“Prescript are medical recruitment specialists.”

At Prescript we’re known for helping solve the regional doctor shortage in Australia.

Every day we’re focused on two clear outcomes - Helping hospitals find doctors that create departments and clinics that run better, have more capacity and less stress. And placing Doctors in jobs that leave them feeling highly valued, rewarded and, most importantly, enjoying what they do.

We believe that when we get these two crucial things right, it has a huge impact on the regional doctor shortage and the healthcare of communities across Australia.

There are three ways to contact us:

1. Call 1800 755 498

2. Email contact@prescript.com.au

3. Click 'Connect with Prescript'

Connect With Prescript

We’d love to hear from you!

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“We’re known for helping solve the regional doctor shortage, leaving doctors loving what they do and regional communities feeling like they have the best doctors in town.”

Locum Doctors - Questions To Ask An Insurance Broker

Alex Conlon is a qualified insurance advisor and director of AMC Insurance. He has been recognised by the Suncorp Group as one of the industry’s next generation of leaders. In this blog, Alex answers some common business insurance queries from doctors.

Questions to ask a broker about insurance cover for your business?

The best way that you can assist a broker is to provide as much information as is reasonably possible to them about your business and its structure. Some brokers will need proposal forms completed for certain types of products. Although not many people like forms, it provides them with an opportunity to appropriately pitch your business exposure to various insurers. This can assist with obtaining the right levels of cover to protect your business, as well as having the most appropriate premium charged by the insurance company. Being prepared with the relevant information about your business (or a business plan for a start-up venture) will make this process run more smoothly.

You may wish to ask your broker whether there are any specific levels of cover that you require to hold. This can be a difficult question to answer for a broker, but if they have an understanding of your contractual obligations to your clients as well as any mandatory limits which might apply to certain types of products it helps. If in doubt, a broker can provide options on varying limits which can assist to determine whether a higher level of cover can be secure at a negligible difference in cost.

An often missed question by clients is whether your insurance intermediary is acting as a broker or an agent. An insurance broker is acting on behalf of the client (you). Whilst an insurance agent will most likely be operating on behalf of the insurance company. An agent of the insurer is obligated to inform you of when they are acting in such a capacity, but it is generally detailed within their Financial Services Guide. The benefit of having a broker acting on your behalf becomes especially important when handling grey area claims. A broker will be able to negotiate on your behalf with an insurance company, where an insurance agent is required to adhere to the decisions made by the insurance company.

You can also consider asking your broker what your ongoing insurance obligations are if you decide to wind up or sell your business. Most classes of insurance can simply be cancelled from the last required date of cover; however, some policies (referred to as 'claims made and notified') may require an additional cover to be purchased to continue to protect your business once you have ceased to trade.

Finding out what level of experience your broker has in their industry segment is also a good idea. Many insurance brokers in the market are worth their weight in gold; however, they might also be focused on representing a broad level of clients in terms of industry classes (e.g. doctors, dentists, labourers, trades, professionals, industrial and commercial). If you find a broker who specialises in your specific industry segment this can be of great benefit in terms of streamlining the information being requested and knowing that the right insurers are going to be approached to secure the most appropriate insurance cover at good value for money. 

If You’re A Locum Doctor – What business insurance do you need?

As a Locum Doctor your risk exposure is similar to that of operating at a surgery, albeit in a mobile capacity.

You have Medical Indemnity Insurance, which protects against the advice that you are providing in connection to your services.  For the medical industry, this type of product is available through a limited number of insurers (e.g. MIGA, AVANT).

Then there is Public & Products Liability cover which at times can be packaged with your Professional Indemnity. This is covering the exposure of slips, trips, falls, or other forms of personal injury and/or property damage arising from the supply of your services.

As most Locum Doctors will not have a fixed office location, they need to take into consideration what Portable & Valuable Equipment is being carried around to various locations and may be exposed to accidental damage, theft, or other risks. The types of equipment might be mobile phones, laptops, tablets (e.g. iPad), doctor's bag and equipment.

If you operate your business between different States and Territories, you may wish to consider obtaining quotes for Business Travel Insurance too.

Depending on how your business is established, you may require to establish:

➞  Workers Compensation to cover the exposure of yourself as a working director/employee for personal injury.

➞  Income Protection/Life Insurance cover in effect, which is offered by specialist brokers in the market (or via your Accountant).

➞  Management Liability Insurance to protect against operating in the capacity of a Director/Officer and the various legal frameworks associated with your industry segment.

How Do You Know If You Have the Right Business Insurance?

This is a difficult question to answer and would be no different to going to a doctor and asking yourself, "how do I know if I have received the right advice on my ailment or condition?". The tone, pace, professionalism, and knowledge of your broker is a key factor in determining whether they understand the risk profile of your business, and even if they don't at the outset, are displaying competence in investigating appropriate protections through the right insurers.

When you do raise questions on your insurance, is your broker responding with confidence and a high level of experience in having assisted other businesses in a similar capacity in the past, or are you speaking with someone who needs to cross-reference to a more senior staff member that you never get to speak with directly?

A final option is to benchmark your current insurer/broker from time to time. It might be that your level of coverage is correct and suitable for your needs, but investigating alternative options results in finding a broker/agent who is more suited to your style of business too. They may have high levels of service standards and go out of their way to provide advice for your business, which in this day and age is a critical factor to consider.  

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About Alex Conlon

AMC Insurance is led by Alex Conlon, a qualified insurance advisor who has been recognised by the Suncorp Group as one of the industry’s next generation of leaders. Alex is focused on guiding the business community to redefine how to think about the value of insurance.

AMC Insurance forms part of the AUB Group who ‘represents more than 1 million client policies and 135 partner businesses across more than 425 locations in Australasia. Combined, AUB Group have over 3,500 client-serving employees, and cover over $4.5 Billion in policy premium.’

You can find out more about AMC here on their website or email Alex here: alexc@abterrace.com.au

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“Prescript are medical recruitment specialists.”

At Prescript we’re known for helping solve the regional doctor shortage in Australia.

Every day we’re focused on two clear outcomes - Helping hospitals find doctors that create departments and clinics that run better, have more capacity and less stress. And placing Doctors in jobs that leave them feeling highly valued, rewarded and, most importantly, enjoying what they do.

We believe that when we get these two crucial things right, it has a huge impact on the regional doctor shortage and the healthcare of communities across Australia.

There are three ways to contact us:

1. Call 1800 755 498

2. Email contact@prescript.com.au

3. Click 'Connect with Prescript'

Connect With Prescript

We’d love to hear from you!

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“We’re known for helping solve the regional doctor shortage, leaving doctors loving what they do and regional communities feeling like they have the best doctors in town.”

Meet Dr Nathan Illman - Clinical Psychologist, Coach & Trainer For Doctors

Hi - my name is Dr Nathan Illman, and I am a coach who works with doctors to help them build a better life and to achieve career success, whatever that means for you. I'm really excited to be partnering with Prescript, providing some content specifically for doctors. I'm going to be providing some written articles and some audio content like my podcast, and maybe some videos.

“It’s a real pleasure to be working with the Prescript team to be giving you this kind of information that I hope you’ll find helpful.”

EFFECTIVE SELF-CARE ROUTINE

There are a number of different areas that I work on with clients and it'll be covered in the kind of content that I provide. This involves things like taking care of ourselves, so how to implement and maintain an effective self-care routine when things are just getting too stressful with your role - I know Prescript works with lots of locum doctors who may be placed out in rural areas where things can be quite unsettling. Sometimes organisations can be quite tricky and difficult to work in, creating quite challenging environments, so giving you ways to help manage the uncertainty, instability, and really keeping those healthy habits, maintain and learn some psychological skills and tools to manage the difficulties that you experience.

IMPROVING AND BUILDING CONFIDENCE

I also work with people on improving and building their confidence. Of course, this ranges from a number of things. This can be bouncing back after failing exams and thinking about how to overcome that self-doubt that's emerged from that. Or it could be working on overcoming when you've made mistakes, perhaps, in your medical career, or you've lost confidence in that area and that's really holding you back from being the kind of doctor that you want to be and being as effective as you want to be.

LEADERSHIP SKILLS

And the other areas: Thinking about leadership development, leadership skills and the bigger picture. For example, what do you want your career to look like? What are the steps that you need to take to get there? And what are the specific behaviours that you need to work on in helping you develop those in the context of that coaching relationship?

BENEFITS OF COACHING

Coaching is in a one-to-one context where we have these kinds of conversations, you learn some new skills, tools and techniques to help you progress with your goals. It's completely confidential, so nothing is shared with your organisation or any other doctor colleagues. I know that can be a concern for some people.

Coaching is perhaps quite a new thing for some people. Sometimes people are a little bit unsure about it, whether or not it's necessary to have a coach. It's funny because, in the elite sporting world, it's very accepted that people will have a coach to guide them and provide a different perspective to help them achieve real, massive success. And it's very, very similar in the context of a coaching relationship with the kind of clients that I work with.

I've trained and studied human behaviour and understanding the psychology of people, and I offer a different perspective with clients and help them learn some new ways of taking care of themselves, improving that confidence and really helping people to make massive change and massive impact in their careers as a doctor.

FREE INTRODUCTORY SESSION

If you're interested to find out more about this, then I offer free taster sessions. I know that it's something that sometimes people are not too sure about, so I really like to give people the opportunity to have a chat with me just to test it out and see what that's like.

I hope you enjoy the content that I provide – I hope it’s useful to you. If you're ever interested to find out a bit more about what coaching looks like, then please feel free to get in touch with me. We can just have a chat and see what your current situation is and how I might be able to help you.

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About Dr Nathan Illman

Dr Nathan Illman (PhD, DClinPsy) completed his Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from King’s College London in 2015. After working clinically in multidisciplinary settings, he observed the lack of support for healthcare colleagues. As a result, he pivoted to set up his own practice providing coaching and training to doctors and nurses. His mission is to help people perform at their peak in healthcare and flourish in life. To book in a free call to discuss his Coaching for Doctors program further, simply go here. You can also find out more at his website at www.nathanillman.com.

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“Prescript are medical recruitment specialists.”

At Prescript we’re known for helping solve the regional doctor shortage in Australia.

Every day we’re focused on two clear outcomes - Helping hospitals find doctors that create departments and clinics that run better, have more capacity and less stress. And placing Doctors in jobs that leave them feeling highly valued, rewarded and, most importantly, enjoying what they do.

We believe that when we get these two crucial things right, it has a huge impact on the regional doctor shortage and the healthcare of communities across Australia.

There are three ways to contact us:

1. Call 1800 755 498

2. Email contact@prescript.com.au

3. Click 'Connect with Prescript'

Connect With Prescript

We’d love to hear from you!

View fullsize

“We’re known for helping solve the regional doctor shortage, leaving doctors loving what they do and regional communities feeling like they have the best doctors in town.”

Different Business Structures Available for Locum Doctors

Hi there! My name is Ben Walker, and I'm the founder of an accounting firm called Inspire - Life Changing Accountants. 

James Hill from Prescript Recruitment has asked me to share a little bit of knowledge around the different types of structures that, as a doctor, you might use to contract to a hospital or a surgery or a practice, and a little bit on the pros and cons of each one. 

As a doctor, there is a choice (or any business in Australia really) of which business structures you can use and there are all sorts of things to consider when you're making a decision.

There are things around tax implications for each structure, risk and insurance perspective (which is actually quite a big one), and even asset protection as you build your family's wealth.

We don't want the risk of running your business (or contracting) to expose your family home as an example - so there are lots to consider.

The three most popular and main business structure options are:

1. Sole Trader -  you've got an ABN in your own name and that's trading as yourself. 

2. Trading as a company -  which is the next most common one. A company is a separate legal entity that you do set up and you run it through a company. You can call it (within reason) whatever you'd like to, but that's yours and you contract to other people through that.

3. The third option is a Trust - there are pros and cons for that, but the main benefit usually for that is to stream income with other family members that the business owner earns. But I will come back on that because as a doctor, that's a little bit tricky to do, and I'll share why. 

Sole Trader vs Company

So let's look at sole trader versus a company. 

The big one here is actually all around risk, the insurance side of things and asset protection. So as a sole trader, you're literally contracting to your customer (or your practice or your hospital) in your own name. So if something goes wrong and you have a dispute, they're going to be suing you personally, and any assets that you own are up for grabs in the event of an outcome that doesn't go in your favour. 

But let's say you've got a company as an example. 

A company is seen as a separate legal entity, so the contract is actually between the company and your customer. If a dispute arises there, in the first instance, they will actually be suing your company and you've got some form of protection there. It doesn't always 100% protect you, but it's definitely not suing you personally in the first instance, which is good. 

Also as a hospital or a practice owner, what they're often looking for in terms of their locums or their doctors that work for them on a contract basis (so not an employee, but on a contract basis) is they want to reduce their risk as much as possible. There are a few risks they might consider, but the key ones in terms of business structures are; what business structure is that doctor using? 

I know it might sound strange, but if you're in a company structure, it could be seen to reduce the risk for the business because that reduces the view that they might need to be paying super on top of your wage. Or if you've set up a company, you might actually be contracting to multiple hospitals or surgeries or practices (depending on what you're doing) and the risk is that you're less likely to be seen as an employee of your customer, which as an employee, you carry a lot more risk to them versus a contractor. 

So what they're trying to reduce in most cases is their risk of being up for super, all the rights as an employee, and that sort of thing. So it's to genuinely see the contract relationship as their company and your company - not as two people contracting or being employed. So that's the big one there. 

Personal Services Income

In terms of the tax side of things - there's not a huge difference from a tax perspective being a sole trader versus a company. The reason that that's the case is because as a doctor, you're getting paid for your personal exertion. The way that the tax law is written, is if you're personally exerting to earn your income (regardless of your business structure) pretty much all of that income needs to end up in your name. This is a bit of an unfortunate thing for doctors where you might be on a very large income level, and unfortunately (depending on your circumstances) in some cases when you're contracting or locuming, we can't go and then split that income with your spouse or your kids.

I mentioned earlier, a trust is a great way of splitting income, but these are the rules with doctors: With personal exertion, we can't go and then say, "Oh, well, the trust earned $200,000, I'm going to split $100,000 with my spouse and $100,000 with me." We can't do that because of that personal exertion rule, so we get a bit stuck there. 

But tax is not a huge factor when you're considering your structure (If you are caught under those personal exertion rules) it does come down to the risk. 

What’s most attractive to your customer?

The other benefit, as well, of incorporating or becoming a company for your contracting, is that you will be more attractive to people looking to bring you on board. No doubt that that will be the case, because they'll see you as a lower risk if you've got all that set up and you're familiar with running your own company - it's a very simple process of almost just providing an invoice, really. So that's a big benefit. When you're looking at getting your next role, if you're as attractive as possible to that potential contractor, then that'll go in your favour versus if you are a sole trader. 

At the end of the day, it is your option, but again, a strong recommendation for a Pty Ltd company. The other thing to keep in mind is to make sure you have a really good insurance advisor to have a look at your public liability insurance, your professional indemnity, and make sure it incorporates your company. 

However you're set-up, whether it's a sole trader, company, or trust - make sure you've got an advisor who really understands their stuff around that, because that is paramount to have sorted, as well. 

So there's a view on the different structures you could have as a doctor, and that's more in that contractor relationship - not an employee.  I hope this has helped!

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About Ben Walker

Author, Award-Winning Chartered Accountant & Founder of Inspire - Life Changing Accountants.

★ Started Inspire at 23

★ Award-Winning Chartered Accountant

★ Co-Authored 'Cashed Up'

★ Helped save clients over $10M in tax (and counting)

★ Given 10M days of impact to families in need

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“Prescript are medical recruitment specialists.”

At Prescript we’re known for helping solve the regional doctor shortage in Australia.

Every day we’re focused on two clear outcomes - Helping hospitals find doctors that create departments and clinics that run better, have more capacity and less stress. And placing Doctors in jobs that leave them feeling highly valued, rewarded and, most importantly, enjoying what they do.

We believe that when we get these two crucial things right, it has a huge impact on the regional doctor shortage and the healthcare of communities across Australia.

There are three ways to contact us:

1. Call 1800 755 498

2. Email contact@prescript.com.au

3. Click 'Connect with Prescript'

Connect With Prescript

We’d love to hear from you!

View fullsize

“We’re known for helping solve the regional doctor shortage, leaving doctors loving what they do and regional communities feeling like they have the best doctors in town.”