Buying Retiring Physician's Practice

[FinanceMed13]

Hello all,

I would like to hear your (current practice owners) opinions on an ordinary, non-physician purchasing a medical practice. I am not studying medicine, I am in the financial world of private equity so essentially I deal with acquiring companies and growing them.

I ask this question out of curiosity as one of my good friends from undergrad will be graduating med school and we have had interesting conversations re: me financing the acquisition of a practice from a retiring physician and hiring him on as a full time physician n a state that allows the corporate practice of medicine.

How would a retiring physician feel about selling their lives' work to someone who is in the world of finance and isn't a licensed physician? Would this be a big turn-off to the sellers?

TIA

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[doc05]

What sort of practice is this?

I wonder how you will make money from this once you've paid the physician a fair wage. Unless this is part of a larger plan to acquire an entire healthcare system.

If that is the case, you need to retain the patients. I wonder why patients would continue following with "the practice" given the new management, new doc, etc. They actually do notice the difference.

 

[Winged Scapula]

As a practice owner, I would have the following concerns:

- my responsibility to my patients and my sense of wanting them to be cared for when I sell the practice; like @doc05 notes, you have to retain the patients and I would want to know that the physician buying my practice would run it in way that would facilitate that

- most physicians aren't good business people; no business people are good physicians. The reason why many physicians are leary of corporate/non-physician run practices is the fear that good medical practice will be compromised by financial concerns

- finally, I'm not sure that a practice where the owner is a friend and the physician is an employee is prudent; its all too easy to result in conflict, hurt feelings and the end of the friendship when the financial partnership is unequal