Yesterday, I got another phone call from this woman who wants to plan her next pregnancy around my availability to provide primary care for a home birth. The first time she asked me to be her midwife, I was so flattered. She is, quite honestly, the ideal client for my practice. She lives ten minutes away from me, she's perfectly normal, she already had a straightforward home birth, and for some reason she seems to like me. I very gently yet jokingly blew her off the first time, but now, I'm having a hard time coming up with an actual valid reason why I shouldn't work with her as my first client.
As far as I know, she's not pregnant yet, so I still have some time. God willing, however, more potential clients will soon be approaching me about my willingness and availability to attend their births, and I need to have all my ducks in a row.
This week, my goal has been to get serious about setting up my practice for real. I did my research about how one actually goes about setting up a small business. First step - get thee a fictitious business name statement from the county in which the business will exist. According to the US government, the official name of a business is the name of the person who owns the business. After all the trouble I went through to finally come up with a name I like, however, I don't want to have to name my practice after myself. So, in that case, I have to file what is known as a "fictitious business name statement" that allows me to use a name other than my own. Apparently, this process is different depending on what state you're in, but in California, the statements are filed with the county clerk-recorder.
Today, I checked Alameda County records for the existence of another "Generations Midwifery Service" and seeing none, I submitted my application for a fictitious business name. Once my application is approved, I can take my statement to the bank (literally) and open up a "free small business checking account" under my new practice name. This will make the tracking of income and expenses so much easier. I can't wait!
On the practical end of things, I have also been developing forms to use in my practice. Before finishing school, I was required to develop and submit a set of forms I plan to use, but I must confess that I was in such a hurry to finish that I just sent in the versions my preceptor was using for her practice. There's nothing wrong with her forms at all, except that I now want to have my own forms instead.
My perfectionist tendency combined with a frustrating lack of knowledge about formatting is making this process rather tedious. Should I make a form in Word and insert a table, or use Excel and merge cells? Louis?
The first form I proudly created with minimal help is called my "progress notes" form. This is basically a whole page of lines for note taking at anything other than a prenatal or postpartum visit. For example, I would use this form if someone called me to report they were sick and asking about what medicines were safe to take or if I was doing more extensive postpartum follow-up to monitor the baby's weight gain. Yes, it was the easiest of all forms to create, but it's a start. And it's not just lines. It has a border and it's pretty, and everything.
The form I'm working on now is the client registration page. This form needs to have space for the client's contact info, all the demographic info that needs to go on the baby's birth certificate, and all the insurance and employer info needed to bill insurance. Even though I'm fairly confident I will not be billing insurance for quite some time, I want to develop the form now so I can be ready.
There is so much to do!
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