The death of a family member is perhaps the most painful experience anyone endures…
This is particularly true when a dental practice owner dies. The unfortunate reality is that with the passing of a dental specialist, the timeliness of the practice sale is crucial in maintaining the practice value. Unlike restorative practices, there is little or no availability of specialist locum tennens to help maintain a specialty practice’s production or referral base. Additionally, the emergency nature of many specialty procedures requires a specialist’s immediate attention. Referring offices are unable to ask their emergency patients to wait on treatment while a transition occurs and must refer them elsewhere. Over a very short period of time, the referral base will dwindle and the practice value will plummet.
A restorative practice may exchange call schedules with another practice and when a crisis hits, the practices rely on each other for coverage. This is a neighborly way to help our colleagues, but likely is not a preferred plan for a transition during a crisis. Often, the distressed practice organically leaves without a more formal transition strategy to put into place quickly.
Preparing the distressed practice for sale is a terrible burden to add to the already overwhelmed and grieving survivors who have no idea what information to collect or where to look. They feel helpless at this moment and don’t know where to turn for professional help. Confusion grows and ultimately rules the moment when rational thinking and decisiveness are most necessary to protect the significant and hard-earned equity remaining in the deceased doctor’s practice. It is little wonder that many valuable practices of disabled or deceased doctor’s are sold at fire sale prices, if indeed they are sold at all!
Phase II offers a free strategy session to determine a viable solution to handling your practice in a time of crisis. Click here to setup your appointment with our transition experts!
