1) Honest self assessment time. How much education, reading, and know-how do you have about IME work? There is a unique lexicon and set of rules for this stuff. Do you know those laws, terms, and processes? How many books on the subject do you own? Based upon that, should you really get involved in it? There are people like me who are literally professionals at tearing newbies apart. In my early days, I flew too high, a pro destroyed me, and I never received any more of that work.
2) Keep a normal schedule and treat it like a business.
a. You can’t earn money if you’re not available to work. Dropping the kids off, taking a long lunch, leaving a bit early= no billable hours. b. Build admin time into your schedule. You now have to find time to handle phone calls about why the internet is out, go to the CPA/bank, track expenses, etc
3) Bill weekly, at a minimum.
4) Get an EIN for your LLC, then an NPI for your LLC, then an LLC bank account, then Amazon business account (no one wants to lift a case of paper), then watch videos on how to get business credit history. Use that bank account for your insurance credentialing, NOT your personal accounts. Google the term "corporate veil"
5) A good rule of thumb: set 50% of your earnings aside. This will give you plenty of money for taxes, operating capital, retirement, etc. a. ALWAYS keep operating capital on hand. You will have slow months, or extra expenses, or whatever. If you look at the listservs, some fools had nothing in operating capital when the pandemic hit.
b. Put money into a SEP IRA initially. You can convert that at a later date.
6) Create a workflow expectation, including how your full time job and personal life will affect your PP work.
a. Plan for slow productivity days (e.g., if you can usually bang 2-3 reports out in day but sometimes you get zero writing done: work that into your expectations).
b. If you decide to jump into forensic work, decide how you are going to handle time interruptions to your normal job (e.g., Last month, I was court ordered to testify in a rural jurisdiction that was a 5hr flight+45 minute flight+2hr drive away from my home OR I've had 30k+ pages of files to review). Courts don't have a "I'm really busy right now" pause button. How will your normal job handle this?
c. How will your schedule handle feedback sessions + testing+writing?
d. Consider your family+friends.
7) When you're starting out, each test you buy HAS to be considered in terms of how much money it will make you. This won't be so important in 2 years.
8) Figure out how you are going to handle phone calls, emergencies, scheduling, etc. The HI-TEC act says you can't use normal email or text messaging with patients. And the FBI just put out that alert about text messages.
