If you’re thinking about selling your medical practice sometime relatively soon—say, within the next few years—there’s no time like the present to give your business a thorough evaluation.

By digging into the details of operations and finance, you will:

• Be better able to describe your business to prospective buyers
• Have a clearer idea of what the business is worth
• Perhaps most important, be able to make improvements now that could yield a higher price

Regarding the last bullet: all practice businesses have some room to improve (nobody’s perfect). Most have enough opportunity to build on strengths and correct inefficiencies to make a noticeable difference in the bottom line. This could be consequential for you even if you don’t sell your business. (After all, most improvements you’ll discover will be repeatable, so the financial upside will continue in the future.)

But if you plan to sell, every increase in your bottom line has the potential to increase the price your practice can attract many times over.

For example, if you discover that you’re losing prospective patients due to front office turnover or correctable phone issues (maybe just a few patients, so you never noticed until you looked closely), fixing that problem creates new revenue possibilities immediately. Those new revenues don’t require more costs, so your profits improve. Those improved profits are sustainable, meaning the financials you’ll use to bring your business to market will look better—and attract better offers.

There are many areas of a practice business that are candidates for quantitative analysis. On the revenue cycle side, many metrics from your EMR/PM system can be evaluated and improved to drive more revenue relatively painlessly. Understanding and improving your technology utilization (even just with the systems you already have) can usually unlock efficiency, and that extra efficiency can reduce stress while improving capacity. Correcting common coding errors can also yield an immediate revenue increase without any more work.

These are just a few of the areas you could look at first. If you want to tackle this type of analysis yourself, our books are a great way to learn how to think like a consultant! You can also contact us to discuss a practice assessment—we’d be happy to help you give your practice business a boost before you take it to market.