Step 7: Open bank accounts

Bluebird’s professional entity and support company each need banking that matches their legal ownership, payer records, books, and agreements. Route payer and patient receipts to the account authorized for the enrolled billing provider and permitted under state law, payer and merchant terms, and any approved reassignment or transition mechanics. Preserve entity-level ledgers and do not give the support company unilateral rights inconsistent with required professional control.

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What Bluebird did

Sam opened two accounts: Maya Okafor, D.D.S., P.C. (d/b/a Bluebird Dental), Operating, with Dr. Okafor as the sole signer and Sam holding view-only access, and Bluebird Practice Partners, LLC, Operating, with Sam as signer. Each application took about ten days because both entities were newly formed.

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Why the practice account is a compliance artifact

Three separate rules converge on this account:

1. CPOD. State law may treat control of professional receipts as evidence of who operates the practice. The legal significance depends on the jurisdiction and the complete authority map. See Corporate practice of dentistry.
2. Payer and program terms. The enrolled billing provider, TIN, NPI, reassignment or agent authority, and EFT record must align. How receivables can be assigned or directed is contract- and program-specific and also shapes healthcare-AR financing. See Working capital and lending against healthcare AR.
3. Basic corporate separateness. Commingled funds are the fastest route to both veil-piercing arguments and a diligence finding that reprices your company.

There is a fourth stream: patient money. Map card settlements, financing proceeds, membership-plan funds, deposits, credits, and patient balances to the legal provider or other contracting entity that owns the receivable and owes the related service or refund. Configure the merchant account to that approved destination when you reach Step 9.

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The minimum account map

For a single-PC launch, open these: As the group acquires practices, the account structure expands. You may need per-PC operating accounts, refund clearing accounts, and location-level reporting. See Structure accounts across your entities and Account structures for DSO-PC groups.

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What the bank will ask for

How much you assemble depends entirely on where you apply.

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At Lemma

The entity is verified from tax and state registration data, so the application is three groups of fields, the same for the PC and the DSO:

• Business profile: legal name, EIN, state of incorporation
• Control person: name, title, date of birth, address, email, phone; for the PC, the dentist-officer
• Beneficial owners: everyone at or above 25%

That is about 5 minutes per entity, and most are approved within hours. Government ID is requested only when the tax ID alone doesn’t verify, which is more likely for an entity formed two weeks ago. Nobody requires the management services agreement (MSA) to open an account, but it is worth sending: Lemma configures the accounts against the funds flow the agreement describes, so the money moves the way the paperwork says it does. A generalist bank that asks for the MSA reads it once and files it.

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At a brick-and-mortar bank

Everything above, plus a document packet per entity. For the PC: filed articles of incorporation (state-stamped), the EIN confirmation letter (CP 575), bylaws and the organizational consent authorizing accounts and naming signers, a stock certificate or ownership schedule showing the licensed shareholder, the dentist’s license, government ID for every signer and beneficial owner, and a DBA certificate if you operate under a brand; Bluebird needed one, since patients know the practice as Bluebird Dental, not as the PC’s legal name. For the DSO: certificate of formation and operating agreement, EIN confirmation letter, beneficial ownership information, and a foreign qualification certificate in the operating state. See KYB/KYC document checklist for both lists in full.

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Who signs

The practice account’s signers and delegates must follow the entity’s governing documents, payer records, bank requirements, and the state’s dental-control rules. In a conventional dentist-owned PC, the dentist-owner or another properly authorized PC officer commonly retains ultimate authority; do not turn that common pattern into a substitute for the actual statute and resolutions. Handle it with structure rather than by cheating:

• The entity adopts a written banking resolution naming lawful signers and approvers.
• Operations staff receive the least authority needed for reconciliation and payment preparation.
• The MSA authorizes the DSO to provide billing and financial administration services, including preparing payments for approval.
• The monthly management fee moves on an invoice, not a standing sweep the DSO controls unilaterally.

Unilateral support-company withdrawal authority over an affiliated professional entity’s account is a serious CPOD issue-spotter. Review signers, sweeps, payment approval, online roles, powers of attorney, and actual practice together under the state rule. See Move money between PC and DSO and Run a CPOD self-audit.

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In-person vs online

Professional entities often trip a generalist bank’s online account opening flow: the automated KYB can’t verify a two-week-old PC with a licensed owner and a d/b/a. Expect either a manual review or a branch visit, and budget one to three weeks per entity. On a platform that verifies the entity from registration data, the same application takes about 5 minutes and clears the same day. Either way, start this in parallel with Step 6 rather than after it. Generalist banks often provide a separate login for each legal entity. That is manageable with one PC but cumbersome with ten, especially when the finance team needs dozens of statements and cannot see all entities together. Open bank accounts for your DSO and PCs covers the available account structures and banking options.

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Your artifact from this step

• Practice operating account, open, with signers and approvals matching the governing authority
• DSO operating account, open
• Account and routing numbers recorded for Step 8’s EFT enrollments
• View-only access provisioned for bookkeeping
• A written note of which account each payer’s EFT will target

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Checklist

• Practice operating account open; signers and approvals match entity documents and state professional-control rules
• DSO operating account open
• Entity funds and ledgers are separate, or any custodial or concentration architecture is specifically approved and documented
• Bookkeeper has read-only access to both
• Beneficial ownership questionnaires answered accurately
• Account numbers documented for payer EFT enrollment
• Confirmed no support-company authority inconsistent with state law, payer terms, bank documents, or the agreement stack

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