Two Reasons Buyers Are Bypassing Your Medical Practice

Despite being on the market for weeks or months and receiving inquiries, no one has submitted an offer to purchase your medical practice. There are a number of reasons why buyers may be sidestepping your business. Here are two issues that may be adversely affecting your sale and what you can do to overcome them.

You Still Use Paper Charts

One thing that could be driving buyers away is if you're one of the few remaining practitioners who are still using paper charts. Although you may have perfected your system, most medical practices have (or are in the process of) switched to electronic programs that make it easier to track patients, appointments, and payments. Chances are good any healthcare provider who purchases your practice will want to use an electronic system, but the idea of computerizing all those paper patient records may be scaring them away.

The best thing you can do in this situation if you hope to sell your practice is to bite the bullet and make the switch to an EHR (electronic health record system). Not only will this make your practice less intimidating to potential buyers, you can use the newness of the system as a selling point, which may actually net you more money than you were originally asking for.

You're Trying to Sell the Practice and the Building

Another issue that could be hurting your sale is if you own the space where your office resides and you're trying to sell both the practice and the facility all in one go. Many buyers may be perfectly happy purchasing an active practice—even one with paper charts—but may not want the added responsibility of owning the building too.

There are a couple of ways you can handle this issue, and both of them involve selling the practice separate from the building. You can sell the practice and then act as the landlord, which lets you earn passive income via rent but still makes you responsible for the building's upkeep. However, you can turn the day-to-day management of the building over to a property management company if you want to minimize your direct involvement.

The other option is to sell the practice to one person and the building to another in a separate real estate transaction. While this may require more effort, you could potentially make more money and responsibility for the practice and the building would be out of your hands.

For more information on making your practice more enticing to potential buyers or help selling it, contact a business broker in your area.

Share