The Biggest Challenge of Practice Mergers

07 May The Biggest Challenge of Practice Mergers

We recently came across a question that has been asked many times. With so much misinformation out there about mergers or just, in general, a lack of information on what they are,  we want to answer these questions head-on and get the truth out. So here it goes!

Question: For anyone that has bought out/merged with a smaller practice in the past, what was the biggest challenge and what would you have done differently?

Answer:
Mergers are beneficial in so many ways!  Jaquay Enterprise has had great success with these transitions.  The hardest part of any merger is merging the two teams and getting everyone to feel settled. If that doesn’t happen right away then hopefully, they put on a good poker face with the patients so they don’t lose patients that they just purchased!

What we typically see, is that the majority of the current team will be on board, but always expect there to be at least one person that has difficulty hearing the word “change”.  The new team will immediately feel their negativity and it can cause there to be a “Doctor A team” and “Doctor B team” instead of just ONE TEAM.

If you know you have someone like this on your team, or on the sellers team, you will want to communicate more with them, make them feel part of the process, ask for their insight on how to best divide up tasks or what changes do they feel will be needed to best address the schedule flow, if it’s your lead assistant, for example.

Once you and the seller are at a point in your negotiations/contracts that you are comfortable telling your teams, let them meet!  Plan to have them together more than once before closing so they can get to know each other, talk about who does what, how the other office handles operations and compare notes.  This will also help you to work out “kinks” you weren’t even aware of.

Bottom line, COMMUNICATION is your biggest challenge when merging practices.

At Jaquay Enterprises, we not only facilitate the legal aspects of a merger but we also handle the communication of the teams. We have specific exercises that address the communication to help avoid one of the biggest challenges in practice mergers.

So, what are your questions when it comes to mergers? Shoot us an email or leave a comment and we’ll address it in a future blog!