Key insights
- Market readiness is about positioning, not a finish line — having financial and operational fundamentals that expand your options over time.
- Clean, credible, steady financials make decisions easier and help others trust the direction you want to take.
- A strong team eases daily pressure on you and keeps the practice running with more consistency.
- Simple, documented workflows keep everything steady when you’re away and give the whole team clearer direction.
Build confidence in your numbers, your team, and your future.
Market readiness is often misunderstood as “getting ready to sell.” In reality, it refers to the discipline of building credible financials, stable operations, and team depth that create options over time — whether that’s hiring confidently, expanding, refinancing, bringing in a partner, or pursuing an eventual exit on your own timeline.
Whether you run a medical or dental practice, medical spa, or cosmetic surgery group, the same truth applies: buyers and lenders weigh confidence heavily when deciding whether — and how — to engage. Confidence comes from clean financials, stable operations, and a team that can perform without owner heroics.
Financial characteristics supporting market readiness
Market readiness is not a certification or guarantee — it’s a practical framework for strengthening financial credibility, operational stability, and leadership depth. Common characteristics include:
- Timely closes — Your monthly close is done consistently.
- Consistent chart of accounts — Provides for comparability across months and locations.
- Clear revenue logic — Understanding production vs. collections, earned vs. deferred, and procedure category.
- Defensible margins — Having expenses classified properly with no “miscellaneous” fog.
- Documented normalization — Use credible add-backs and owner compensation clarity.
Financial normalization: Increasing clarity without aggressive add-backs
Normalization is not creative accounting. Normalization is separating true ongoing operating costs from one-time or owner-specific items.
Examples that are often legitimate (if documented) include one-time legal, restructuring, or recruiting costs; unusual repairs or non-recurring vendor events; owner personal expenses run through the business (should be cleaned up going forward).
Normalization becomes valuable when it’s transparent and repeatable, not opportunistic.
Team depth: The real driver of valuation and scale
In health care practices, one of the biggest risks is owner dependency. Market-ready organizations deliberately build roles de-risking the owner. Core roles creating durability are:
- Operations leader/practice administrator to run day-to-day execution
- Revenue cycle leader to manage collections discipline and reduce leakage
- Controller/strong accounting lead to handle close process and reporting integrity
- HR/recruiting coordinator or partner to stabilize staffing
- Marketing/BD owner to oversee pipeline and brand consistency
A deeper leadership bench also strengthens the credibility of any future valuation or compensation review, since buyers and advisors look for teams that can sustain performance without owner reliance. You don’t need all of this on day one, but you do need a plan aligning with growth.
Continuity planning: The “If I’m out for 30 days” test
A surprisingly powerful readiness test is simple: “If I’m out for 30 days, what breaks?” Continuity planning means documenting the workflows keeping the business stable. The necessary workflows include:
- Monthly close steps and who owns each piece
- Vendor list and renewals calendar
- Payroll and benefits process
- Patient and customer lifecycle process. New leads to conversion to service to follow-up.
- Compliance and credentialing basics, and
- Technology systems map for practice management, payment processing, EHR/PMS, reporting
Market-readiness checklist you can implement in 90 days
Use these three checklists to assist:
Financial
Use monthly close discipline with a consistent package to provide visibility into key drivers, such as accounts receivable, deferred revenue, and inventory, as applicable. Use a simple budget and variance process.
Operational
A key performance indicators scorecard with consistent definitions provides for a weekly rhythm for accountability and documented core processes, your “how we do things here” basics.
People
Create a clear organizational chart even if you are a small organization. This provides role clarity and delegated ownership. Plus, use a hiring plan tied to capacity constraints (not “we are busy”).
No matter the practice, the same truth applies: buyers and lenders factor confidence into their decisions, shaped by clean financials, stable operations, and a competent team.
Succession planning options beyond “Sell or don’t sell”
Succession planning is your decision architecture. Common pathways are:
- Internal buy-in, associate pathway. You need clean financials and a leadership bench.
- Partial sale to a strategic partner. Provides liquidity plus growth capital plus infrastructure.
- Platform alignment through a dental service or medical service organization style structure (depending on specialty).
- Recapitalization later after operational maturity.
The right path for you depends on your goals, timeline, and risk tolerance — but every path benefits from readiness.
How CLA can help with market readiness
Getting your financials market ready isn’t an event. It’s a system: clean, credible financials with a leadership bench that reduces owner dependency, and continuity planning that protects performance. If you build this system, you don’t just increase valuation, you increase freedom.
CLA’s finance and account services and health care specialization leaders can help you advance your market readiness no matter where you’re starting from or headed.