When Dr. Tara Merritt decided to move to Athens she had a hard time finding a practice that would support her specialty—pediatrics and sports medicine. So she decided to open an office of her own. 

For help, she turned to the Georgia Small Business Development Center, a unit of the UGA Office of Public Service and Outreach. 

Merritt shared her vision with John Maynard, the SBDC assistant state director for capital formation.

“We looked at geographic data, types of practices and the patients I wanted to serve,” she says. “I honed in on a couple of areas, and we ran all kinds of data relating to these geographic locations.” 

Maynard, who with Matt Lastinger also directs the SBDC’s medical practice management training and consulting activities, helped her put together a loan package to get the business started and they worked together on a budget.

In 2012, Merritt opened Performance Pediatrics and Sports Medicine in Bogart, the first such specialized practice in the Athens area. 

 Lastinger helped practice administrator Mary Walthers, one of three staff members,  set up an accounting system. He showed her how to work with QuickBooks and how to correlate it with the practice management software.

Maynard set up a performance dashboard to help track their progress. 

“We’ve found that doctors have a lot of good data in their practice management systems, but they don’t know how this data should drive their decision making,” he says. 

“John and Matt have helped us project how many employees we can afford based on patient volume, and we’ve grown to five staff,” Walthers says. “They also helped us project our revenues. Budgeting has helped us make sure we’re not overspending in office supplies and payroll.”

Merritt saw about six patients a day when the practice opened. Now she sees 18-20 patients a day. 

“We’re getting very close to our goal in a very short amount of time,” she says. “At the end of the year, I was right on the budget. This is very hard to do your first year out, especially in the health care market today.”