Don’t abandon new partner buy-ins despite concerns

Today's medical climate affects both a senior's or group's willingness to offer buy-in and the junior's willingness to take it. To begin, consider young physicians' concerns.

Buying into a practice has always required a sense of faith in the future that good prospects lie ahead, especially with the tremendous media coverage of declining physician incomes, practice purchases gone awry, and federal government cutbacks on several fronts. These younger doctors also worry that the senior(s) might "sell the practice out from under them" and wonder where they will fit in if the senior(s) merge the practice into some other entity.

In recruiting for their new associates, the seniors have to deal with all this pessimism, making the search more difficult than ever. Still, don't abandon the buy-in concept. Your practice continues to maintain-and offer to new partners-distinct value. Goodwill still exists! If you have taken care to cultivate patients, payers, and referrers to do things right, your practice may need another partner. Thus it may easily afford that additional income sharer, too, as it grows and maintains its revenue streams.