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Your Medical Practice: Setting Up a Partnership

Are you ready to establish a partnership for your Florida-based medical practice?

If you are considering expanding your practice, these are 5 key concepts you will need to ponder before adding a business partner to your medical practice:

1. Goals for your Medical Practice

Understand your current business and where you want to go with it.  Develop a plan delineating the goals for your business and how a business partner will fit into your goals.  You will need to have a good idea of several key measurements including current and future patient visit volume, expenses, profit margins, and infrastructure and how these will change with a partner.  It’s also important to consider how much control of the business you are willing to give up to the business partner.

1. Evaluating Potential Partners

Finding the right partner who blends well with your practice is critical.  Ideally, you’ll want to select someone who not only has excellent credentials and experience but who also has similar goals for the medical practice.  Finally, it’s best to find someone who fits well culturally with your office and practices medicine with a similar patient philosophy.

1. Determining the Best Buy-in Plan and Compensation for your Practice

Many medical practice partnerships involve a buy-in, when an associate purchases a percentage of the business, allowing him or her to truly be a partner in the practice.  It’s critical to determine how much the business is worth, how much control you are willing to transfer to a partner, and the optimal way to structure a partnership.

In addition, you will need to negotiate compensation as either a base salary, a base salary plus an incentive, or a pure percent of revenues.  A simple base salary does not offer special incentives.  A base salary plus incentive allows the incoming partner to share in the rewards.  Finally, a less common option is a percentage strategy that allows the incoming partner to share in practice risk and reward.  Together with your attorney, you’ll need to analyze which will be best.  

1. Putting the Proper Agreements in Place

Legal agreements will need to be drawn up to provide the proper control and financial rights for each owner.  In addition to defining the partnership, buy-in plan, and compensation, agreements must include vacation time, medical malpractice insurance, covenants for non-competes and non-solicitations, buy-out terms, voting, allowances for dues, medical licenses, continuing education classes, etc.

1. Integrating your Partner

Once the agreements are signed, you and your new partner can work together to set up appropriate introductions to patients, employees, colleagues, and referring physicians.  In addition, you will need to carefully review the policies and procedures, so both of you are in lockstep with operations.

ECanter Lawyers

Healthcare business owners as well as physicians face unique regulations as they form, purchase or sell practices or ancillary businesses. At ECanter Lawyers, we have the necessary legal expertise to properly assist clients with the purchase or sale of medical-related practices in Florida. In addition, our firm assists with the drafting, review, and the negotiation process of medical and healthcare related contracts, including: 

• Entity Formation
• Structural Compliance
• Ownership Documents
• Medical Directorships
• Sales & Purchases – Space Leases
• Buy-ins & Buy-outs

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