March 2015
Preparing to Sell a Medical Practice: 3 Key Steps
Whether you’re considering selling your medical practice or you’ve already made a firm decision to do so, three key preparation steps can help ensure a successful outcome. They require significant data gathering and analysis, but the result will be worth it.
1. Benchmark practice performance
The first step is to compare your practice’s performance to that of similar practices in the same market. A better-performing practice will command a higher price — if you have data to back it up. Some commonly accepted metrics for demonstrating how well a physician practice is functioning include:
- Individual productivity of the practice’s physicians and midlevel providers, tracked by work RVUs,
- Compensation levels for all physicians,
- Number of active patients,
- Number of patient visits in the most recent year, and
- Average cash collections per patient visit.
If there are other measures that are representative of your practice’s performance, include them as well. If the data has been collected for some time, present it as trending analysis for the last three to five years.
Once you’ve gathered the desired data, acquire these same statistics for competing practices, and contrast them with yours. The best source of information is the Medical Group Management Association. The second is your state medical association.
The benchmarking process may reveal some shortcomings, but don’t try to hide them. A savvy buyer’s due diligence will uncover them anyway. Most buyers understand that there’s room for improvement in every practice, and they may view deficiencies as opportunities for change that will enhance the potential upside of the deal.
If the shortcomings are severe, you may want to hold off on putting your practice on the market. By taking some time to remedy the problems, you’ll probably enjoy a higher price when you do sell.
2. Review physician-owner payments and expenses
Identify money paid to the physician-owners of the practice in the form of compensation and expenses. Buyers give a lot of attention to total payments made to physicians who own the practice. Those payments are usually a large percentage of total practice expenses, and doctors will likely expect that their payments will continue at the same levels after the acquisition is completed. But while physician payments are a significant expense, they’re also a measure of the practice’s success — more profitable practices can afford to pay their owners better.
There are several categories of payments to physician-owners. Direct compensation may be in the form of salaries, contributions on behalf of the physician-owners to retirement plans, or profit distributions. Make sure you calculate the latter on a regular basis.
Persistent but discretionary expenses include travel, food and entertainment, and automobile expenses. There also may be nonrecurring expenses associated with physician-owners, such as legal, consulting and financial fees or equipment purchases.
3. Prepare strategic and financial plans
If you don’t already have them, prepare strategic and financial plans for your practice. A great way to boost the market value of a practice is to demonstrate that the practice is strong and on a path to more growth and success in the future.
Strategic and financial plans are often joined together, and the combined plan should explain how the practice will leverage its strengths and weaknesses to address the opportunities and threats that it faces. (See the sidebar “SWOT the practice.”) The plan should start with an analysis of the practice’s internal and external environment, state a coherent future direction, define strategic objectives for moving in that direction, and lay out an action plan for achieving the objectives.
Professional input
If your practice doesn’t have the training and experience to execute these steps, bring in professional help. Your financial advisor is knowledgeable about your financial history and current condition. He or she can assist not only while you prepare your practice for sale, but also after offers come in.
During negotiations and the due diligence process, buyers will request detailed financial and operating information and ask probing questions about the practice’s past performance and future outlook. To separate true buyers from lookers, ask for a deposit to look at the books and records. You’ll need to respond to these inquiries and negotiate a final deal, all while continuing to practice medicine.
Sidebar: SWOT the practice
In addition to — or in place of — the practice benchmarking its performance (see main article), consider a traditional SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis of your practice’s operating environment. It requires identifying the internal practice characteristics that put it at an advantage or disadvantage compared with others, as well as external factors that could be exploited by the practice or pose problems for its success.
Some examples might include the following:
- Ancillary services are offered (strength).
- Staff turnover is high (weakness).
- A new accountable care organization (ACO) seeks the practice’s participation (opportunity).
- The largest payer proposes lower reimbursement rates (threat).
© 2014
This material is generic in nature. Before relying on the material in any important matter, users should note date of publication and carefully evaluate its accuracy, currency, completeness, and relevance for their purposes, and should obtain any appropriate professional advice relevant to their particular circumstances.
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