6 tips for merging your medical practice without losing your people or your patients

A practice merger can feel like the fastest route to scale: more leverage with payers, shared overhead, broader service lines and (ideally) fewer administrative headaches. But “merge and move on” isn’t a strategy. The groups that come out stronger tend to treat the deal like a long transition one that demands clarity up front and relentless execution after closing.

With medical groups consolidating faster, more physicians are finding themselves in the middle of a deal; sometimes more than once. In Medscape’s latest report on health care mergers and acquisition, 53% of physicians said the pace of mergers and acquisitions has increased in the last two years, while 43% said it’s stayed about the same.

The survey suggests those deals aren’t always experienced as a win on the ground. When asked to rate M&A sentiment 52% said their experience was negative while 39% landed in the middle and only 9% said their experience was positive.

In other words: consolidation may be accelerating, but enthusiasm is not. And because many physicians report being part of transactions as the acquired entity, the practical question for practice leaders isn’t whether M&A is “good” or “bad.” It’s how to merge without losing the people, workflows and patient trust that made your practice work in the first place.

Here are six practical tips to help physician owners and administrators plan, close and integrate the right way.