Valeo Online

By Carole D. Christian and Theodore T. Myre, Jr. Partners, Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, LLP.

The recent passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“PPACA”) is likely to accelerate physician employment by hospitals.  Because of added burdens, requiring administrative time and monetary outlays, some have predicted the demise of solo and small physician practices.  Coming on the heels of the 2009 law requiring adoption of electronic medical records, private practitioners may find that PPACA’s push toward integration of health services is a force too powerful to resist.

By Catherine Hill

Selection – the Purchase Experience

Dr. Jim Shaughnessy, who is Chief of the VA Hospital Dental Clinic, and his wife Karen have relied on The Door Store and Windows for quality doors and windows – twice. The first time was in 2004 when they selected The Door Store & Windows to install windows and a door in a new room addition in their home near Seneca Park. The second time, in May 2010, they had been so pleased with The Door Store and Windows’s previous work on the room addition that they went back to The Door Store and Windows to install 22 new  replacement windows throughout the original part of the house.

By Jeffery A. Sexton, Managing Member: Arsenal Investment Advisors, LLC

The turmoil in world financial markets the past two years has caused many investors to question the “fairness” of this casino-like situation. Is a CD or 30-day U.S. Treasury bill the only safe investment for Main Street investors to purchase now? Is the game really that rigged in favor of the house? What happened to just buying Pfizer or Merck and holding on for twenty or thirty years until retirement while collecting nice dividends along the way? Unfortunately, you and your investment advisors (and bankers and real estate agents and CPAs and attorneys) are the unwitting victims of a grand academic experiment at the hands of my professors at the University of Chicago and their colleagues at other top business schools. The slick marketing machine of Wall Street with its bottomless budget only made matters worse.

By Calvin R. Rasey, President, Physicians Financial Services

Due to the current economic conditions many physicians have found it necessary to look into different strategies to help their hard earned assets from lawsuits, litigation, as well as taxation.  In a recent conversation with a physician, the following question was brought to my attention.  “Calvin I own a considerable amount of investment property and I don’t know how my assets should be owned in order to provide some protection, as well as tax savings for me and my family?”  The answer to this question is complex due to each unique situation.

By Eric Gunderson, CEO, Valeo Communications

Often times when I talk to doctors about their marketing plan, they tell me they rely primarily on word-of-mouth from their existing patients to bring in new patients.  This makes sense since there is certainly no more powerful form of promotion than having your own patients solicit new business for you.

The danger of relying on word-of-mouth, however, is the control you forfeit in terms of what is being said about your practice and whether or not your patients are sending you the kinds of cases you really want.