In today's healthcare environment practitioners realize that their practices are small businesses and they must be operated as a small business in order to be profitable. Increasing pressures to run their practices efficiently and effectively have made them aware of how little they know of the accounting and financial practices necessary to run their business. This book attempts to provide a hands-on guide to the necessary practices and procedures needed to run today's medical practice. Information provided includes basic financial and accounting techniques, from terminology to applications, financial statements, general business considerations such as internal controls, a base on which decision making can be formulated and evaluated, and actual sample balance sheets and financial statements from successful medical practices.