GP sale readiness check
Free. About twenty minutes if your figures are to hand.
The assessment covers the areas buyers and their advisers work through in due diligence, and scores the practice across five of them. Financial readiness counts for the most, at 40%.
What it covers
Financial readiness
Whether your EBITDA is documented and you can show which way it has moved, your billing data, wages as a proportion of revenue, tax lodgement status, and whether owner labour has been separated from business profit. Until it has been, reported profit overstates what a buyer would earn.
Compliance and governance
Ownership structure, whether GP agreements are current, and any unresolved regulatory history.
Operational readiness
Practice management software, whether you have reporting software or work the numbers out by hand, the balance of chronic care and assessment billing, and whether what you pay your GPs leaves the practice enough margin.
Practice infrastructure
Premises tenure, MMM location classification, how much your rooms are used, nursing support and any other income the practice earns.
Strategic and succession readiness
Whether a succession plan exists or is informal, how long until you intend to exit, and whether the GPs staying on have put that in writing.
What you need on hand
Your P&L and EBITDA figures, tax lodgement status, billing data and wages as a percentage of revenue. Your ownership structure, GP contracts and regulatory history. Your practice management software and any reporting software you use, and how much of your billing is chronic care. Your location classification, how long your GPs have been with you, premises tenure, other income, room use and nursing support.
The score only means something if you answer the whole set.
Financial information
- Your most recent profit and loss statements or management accounts (at least two financial years).
- Your normalised EBITDA figure or reconciliation, if your accountant has prepared one. If not, use a rough estimate of annual profit before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation.
- The status of your tax return lodgements: how many of the past three years have been lodged with the ATO.
- The practice's approximate total annual billings (gross, before expenses).
- Your bulk billing rate or billing model (percentage of consultations bulk billed versus privately billed).
- Total staff wages for administration and nursing combined, as a percentage of total billings. Your accountant or practice manager should have this, or it can be pulled from your payroll and billing reports.
- Whether your accountant has adjusted your EBITDA to separate the owner's clinical billings and management time from business profit.
Compliance and governance
- Your current ownership structure: entity type (company, trust, partnership), who the shareholders or partners are, and whether a partnership or shareholder agreement is in place and current.
- The status of GP service or employment agreements: whether contracts are signed, current, and cover all practising GPs.
- Whether any current or former GP in the practice has been subject to a Professional Services Review (PSR), Medicare compliance review, or AHPRA investigation in the past five years, and the outcome if so.
- Whether any GP currently practising in the business has active AHPRA conditions, undertakings, or notations on their registration.
- The status of your workplace safety policies, training records, and incident reporting. Whether these have been reviewed in the past 12 months.
Operations
- Whether you use reporting software (such as Cubiko, PracticeHub Analytics or reporting built into your practice management system) to track billing performance, care plan activity and how fully your sessions and rooms are used.
- The name and version of your practice management software, and whether it is cloud-based, current, and integrated with online booking, recalls, and reporting.
- The proportion of your total billings that comes from chronic care management and health assessment items (GP management plans, team care arrangements, 75+ health assessments and similar). Your practice management system or Cubiko can generate this.
- The service fee or percentage split charged to tenant or contractor GPs (the practice's share of GP billings).
Practice premises and infrastructure
- Whether your practice is located in a metropolitan area (MMM 1 to 3) or a regional or rural area (MMM 4 to 7). If you are unsure, check the DoctorConnect website using your practice postcode.
- Your current GP workforce stability: whether all sessions are filled with permanent GPs, whether any GPs are planning to leave within 12 months, or whether the practice relies on locums or has unfilled positions.
- Your premises arrangement: whether you own the property, lease it (and if so, the remaining term and whether renewal options exist), or occupy under an informal agreement.
- Whether the practice earns income from pathology collection, imaging, allied health, or other sub-leases, and whether those agreements are current, signed, and transferable.
- How well your consulting and treatment rooms are used during core hours: whether sessions are mostly full, partly used, or significantly under-booked.
- Whether the practice has a dedicated treatment room that meets RACGP standards for infection control and emergency response, and whether nurse coverage is adequate (roughly 0.8 FTE per 4 FTE GPs or better).
Your exit and succession plans
- When you expect to sell or retire from ownership: within 12 months, 1 to 3 years, 3 to 5 years, or longer.
- Your main reason for considering a sale (retirement, relocation, partnership change, financial pressure, or other).
- Whether you have a succession or transition plan in place, and if so, whether it is documented or still informal.
- Whether at least one partner or senior GP has agreed to remain working in the practice for at least 12 months after the sale.
What you get back
An overall readiness score and the band it falls in. A score for each of the five areas, so you can see which one is dragging. Then the priority gaps behind those scores, each written out with the action that closes it. Each gap names the figure to recast, the document to produce or the system to put in place, and what a buyer does with it if you do not.
The report separates what to fix from what to plan for, and if your timeline is short it tells you which gaps to spend your remaining months on and which to let go.
What it is not
It is not a valuation and it puts no price on your practice. It tells you where a buyer would find something to argue about.
What it costs you to find out
Nothing, and you are not identified. The assessment does not ask your name. It saves your answers under a random number instead. Nobody calls you because you ran it. If you want to talk the result through, the first conversation is free too.