Let’s assume that you’ve decided to sell your practice or, perhaps better said, decided to investigate whether or not you’d be interested in selling your practice.
Don’t make the mistake of focusing only on the money. The right buyer for your practice is as important as the right price.
Depending on your medical specialty, buyers can be segmented multiple ways. For example, we can sort them as hospitals versus groups, single specialty versus multi-specialty, medical groups in it for the long haul versus short term private equity investors.
And then within those segments, there are countless differences among the players, from culture to business horizon.
For example, if you’re the leader of a large hospital based group considering being acquired, which almost certainly means that many group physicians will be interested in working long term with the buyer, which buyer’s culture provides the best fit? And, how long is that buyer likely to own your group?
Or, for example, if you’re an office practice physician, say an orthopedic surgeon, considering selling, you may or may not be interested in working for the buyer at all. If you’re taking money and retiring, then, unless it’s all cash at closing, many factors lead to whether the buyer will remain solvent and actually pay you.
Depending on your situation, money (as in a sale) isn’t just money.
