A Free Embezzlement & Employee Theft Scams Course For Members

There are only two types of cosmetic clinics; Those who have have been stolen from, and those that don't know that they've been stolen from yet.

Every cosmetic clinic has this problem.

Every. Single. One.

And it's not hard to see why. Most people aren't bad, but there's always temptation, especially when it's easy or there are outside pressures or gripes that make it easy to justify taking just a little here and there. That little voice that says, "I'm the one doing the work. The patients love me. Everyone else is getting rich. I'm owed more...".

We're doing our part to help protect your clinic by taking our popular embezzlement guide and turning it in to a free course with video explanations and added it to the new Medical Spa MD Training Academy. You'll learn how how these scams work, and how you can protect your clinic from them.

This course is entirely free, and may just save your clinic.

In this course you'll uncover all kinds of creative, never-thought-of-that scams:

• A physician employee connecting his personal account to the credit card terminal.
• A PA injecting patients with saline and stealing Botox to run a side business.
• Laser technicians "up-selling" treatments and pocketing thousands in cash every week.
• A simple accounting scheme that drove a clinic into bankruptcy.
• A manager treating patients on weekends.
• Front desk staff using a simple credit card scam and skimming 3% of sales.
• And (unfortunately) many, many more...

These physicians and clinic owners weren't stupid. They weren't lax or taking their eye off of the ball. They were just victims of the myriad creative ways that these scams work, and they hadn't taken this course yet.

This course gives you the inside cheats, tricks and scams that people use every day, and the simple ways that you can prevent the vast majority from ever getting started in the first place. This course is for every physician, clinic owner, manager and employee working in cosmetic medicine.

Submit Embezzlement & Employee Theft Stories From Your Medical Practice Or Clinic

Unfortunately, employee embezzlement and theft in cosmetic medical clinics is commonplace. We're going to help you with that.

We've posted about theft and embezzlement before. Read: Embezzlement & Employee Theft: It can, and probably will, happen to you.

We're building a new loss prevention report that will cover this area and provide you with just about every trick in the book including:

• How common embezzlement schemes are set up and how these criminals cover their tracks.
• How thieves steal Botox and injectables to supply their side business.
• Credit card and payment scams at the front desk.
• Treatment room cash payments.
• Inventory and product theft in the back room.
• Everything else...

To do this we're reaching out to you, our Members and readers, and asking for your help. If you have inside knowledge of a situation that involved embezzlement or theft, that you let us know by submitting your story and giving us all the gory details. (No identifiable information is required so you can tell the story anonymously if you wish.)

Click Here To Submit Your Story

http://MedicalSpaMD.com/Embezzle

We're compiling these submissions as well as drawing on our own experiences and contacting embezzlement and loss prevention experts to produce a comprehensive blueprint for protecting your clinic and your business that will give you insight into how these scams work, and how you can prevent them.

If you have any thoughts on this topic or what we should include, please leave them in the comments below.

Embezzlement & Employee Theft Can, And Probably Will, Happen To You.

Employee embezzlement and thefts are the most common crimes in any cosmetic practice... in fact, it's pervasive.

Believe me it can and it did happen to us. It’s still hard to believe that I saw the evidence and ignored it because I just could not believe what my eyes were seeing. Instead of going with my gut instinct I listened to a mountain full of lies from my Physician Assistant so the first lesson learned is trust what your eyes are seeing and rely less on distracting noise.

When all was said and done, our P.A. had stolen over the course of just 14 months, more than $200,000 in Botox, Fillers and Laser Treatments. 

How was she able to accomplish this?  The theft occurred in three primary ways.

1. With Botox/Dysport she would mix the proper dilution of 2.5 and then draw out a full syringe of properly diluted Botox and re-inject another syringe of saline. She would then take the syringe of Botox and put into her mini-cooler posing as a lunch box which she brought every day to keep it cold and then treat patients out of her house. The evidence of this was apparent with patients complaining of poor results. She would cover herself with some inventive lies such as; Botox out too long and I did not want to waste it, the refrigerator was not cooling to proper levels, she put the Botox in the freezer and the solution crystalized and weekend the Botox, I may have accidently put in too much saline and I used Dysport and it does not work as well as Botox.  Looking back I can clearly see the evidence but listened to her lies and excuses.
2. On fillers her number one excuse was that the product “leaked” while injecting and she was forced to use another syringe. Other excuses were the patient had a bad result so to keep them happy she offered a free syringe, a reaction that forced her to remove and re-inject later and I threw in some free syringes because she bought a package of Fractional Laser Treatments.  Most of the time, she was simply pocketing the syringes to again inject patients of our practice at her house.
3. Watch you consults and close ratios. We have been in a bad economy so this was hard to gage.  She would “feel” out the patient during the consultation and those who she believed would be players she would offer discounts for Fractional Laser, IPL’s, Matrix etc. if they paid her directly in the room in cash. I was tipped off by this from a competitor who called me and told her one of their patients told them about this. After firing my P.A. within weeks we had identified 36 patients who paid cash in the room.  She told those patients she was the co-owner so it was ok to pay in the room… To add insult to injury we had to complete their treatments as well.

The Medical Spa Embezzlement & Scams Report

Download the new Medical Spa Embezzlement & Employee Theft Scams Report 

Submit your own story about medical clinic embezzlement or theft here

After having gone through this we put in some practices that I wish we had done all along.  We now perform a Botox and filler audit every Friday. Every unit of Botox is logged onto a log sheet by patient and same for fillers. If we are off by more than 5% I will meet with my NP to go over the discrepancy.  On lasers shot counts are logged for every patient. As an example if Mary comes in for a Fractional Laser Treatment and the beginning shot count was 45,000 and ending shot count was 45,400 then the next patient for the same treatment should begin at 45.401. We also now provide to each patient our policy of ONLY paying for services at the front desk during check out.

I was also amazed to find out that every staff member suspected what was going on but was afraid to say anything because they did not want to cause any problems if they were wrong. Lastly review your insurance policy for theft coverage. I was mortified to find that ours only covered $10,000 which left us loses of about $200,000.00. We were able to absorb the losses but many others might have been forced to lay off staff or worse go out of business. As a non-physician owner I trusted far too much that a professional medical practitioner would not steel. I now understand all too well that the white coat which commands respect could also have hidden prison stripes and to use my eyes and cover my ears…

Update on 2012-07-25 18:41 by Medical Spa MD

Update: We're going to compile a report on embezzlement and employee theft in medical clinics.

If you have a story about an employee of fellow staf member who was stealing or embezzling, please help us all by submitting that story here: Submit your story about medical clinic embezzlement or theft:

Personally identifyable information so you can submit this story anonymously. 

Protecting your medical spa from embezzlement.

Employee (and accountant) embezzlement is rampant in medical clinics. Medical spas, laser clinics, and plastic surgeon offices are no different. We've even had the unpleasant experience of a physician embezzling from one of our clinics. 

Download the free, members-only report: Medical Spa Embezzlement & Employee Theft Scams

Submit your own story about medical clinic embezzlement or theft here

Entrepreneur.com: Protecting your medical spa from embezzlement.

So what should you do to ensure that you have controls in place to minimize the opportunity for embezzlement at your company? Here are some tips:

1. Don’t leave cash lying around in an unprotected spot. It can easily disappear, and you don’t want to tempt people by being careless.

2. Don’t use signature stamps for checks. They're too easy to misuse. Sign the checks yourself with a pen.

3. Minimize the number of employees who have signature authority on your bank account. Too many hands in the pot can lead to disaster.

4. Make deposits nightly so that excess funds aren't left onsite...

Update on 2012-08-28 21:56 by Medical Spa MD

The Medical Spa Embezzlement & Scams Report

Download the new Medical Spa Embezzlement & Employee Theft Scams Report