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Eight practice merger success factors
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“Every single time you make a merger, somebody is losing his identity. And saying something different is just rubbish.”
– Carlos Ghosn
“The whole is more than the sum of its parts.”
– Aristotle
“A work well begun is half ended.”
– Plato
Mergers, as they say on Wall Street, are driven by just two emotions: fear and greed. Said a bit more genteelly in keeping with the profession of ophthalmology, “distress” and “ambition” are the real drivers for practice consolidation today.
Mergers are clearly on the rise in eye care, fueled by several factors: regulatory complexities, falling fees, rising costs, tapering profits and a large cohort of baby boomer peri-retirement surgeons with not enough young, bold successors available to take over the wheel.
Mergers — and their near-cognates in practical, operational terms, such as acquisitions, joint ventures, strategic alliances and the like — take many forms:
- Coalescing two or more essentially equal practices into one larger practice;
- Large practices tucking in smaller competitors;
- Older providers selling their practice to a local colleague as a succession strategy, in lieu of hiring a partner-track physician;
- and Practice management companies and hospitals acquiring private practices.
Today, surgeons who are either distressed or ambitious — and many are both — are in the hunt for opportunities to join with their colleagues. Here are eight success factors as you either take the initiative and start looking for merger candidates or consider overtures you are increasingly likely to receive in the years ahead.
Click here to read the publication exclusive, By the Numbers, published in Ocular Surgery News U.S. Edition, February 10, 2015.