Practice Drama

Ok, I figured I better post something again. And since I said I'd post something about the practice, I guess I should stick to what I said.

So, anyway. The practice. It's been pretty smooth sailing so far. It seems like business has been pretty steady. The staff is great and know what they're doing, and thus it's been pretty easy to take over, and run your own business. I'm glad we chose to buy a practice instead of starting from scratch. It's nice to have a steady income and stuff like that. Of course, the debt-side of it all is a bit freaky, but again - so far so good.

Henry's already had a few funny and/or crazy patient encounters - anything from people accidentally drinking their contact lenses to real emergencies ( a kid whose eye started bulging out more and more, and who had to be rushed to UC Davis in Sacramento to save his eye). Fun times.

Buying the practice though wasn't as fun. It went from pretty smooth at first to pretty sour over time. Just before we bought, we almost walked away from it all - mostly over being unable to agree on a price for the building which we also wanted to buy. In order for the practice purchase to go through, we needed to get an agreement on either a rental price for the building (lease) and/or a purchase price for the building. And in both cases we felt the seller was asking way too much. I mean, we live in the friggin' middle of nowhere. The real estate agent we were working with was giving us general ideas of rent in this town, and what the seller asked for was easily 1/3 more than what most people paid. It seemed ridiculous.

At some point, after much back and forth debating, we decided along with the seller that the only way to resolve the dispute was to bring in an appraiser, and settle the matter of whatever the appraisal comes up with. The cost of the appraisal was to be split between seller and us. So, that's what we did. Little did we know that the appraiser guy wouldn't even use any rental prices from the area we actually live in (he only used rental prices from Redding - a city 1 hour away), and he also did some other things that were a bit strange.

Anyway, when the appraisal came in, the purchase price was exactly along the lines of the price we had already negotiated. His rental price was just a wee bit lower than what the seller wanted ($150 less). But we were still not happy. When Henry looked over the appraisal he noticed that the purchase price was calculated using a variety of rental prices. The rental prices that were used, however, weren't reflective of what's normal for our area (since they were all based in Redding). Even better, they partially consisted of rental prices of buildings that were not being rented YET, and it was only an average asking price being used. Well, to make this short, when Henry adjusted the calculation for either what is paid in rent for medical building in Redding on average, the purchase price of our building would have dropped by almost $40,000.

Which again, confirmed what we had figured all along - that the purchase price was way too high. And the rental price as well (the seller who now owns a practice in Redding where she's renting the building pays less in rent than we do...even though the building are about the same size....). So, Henry was still not willing to really agree on the purchase price/rental price, and let's just say the seller wasn't happy about it all. Things got pretty grumpy. In the end, she dropped the price by another $5000, and we agreed on that, and the appraisal rental price. And bought the practice.

But, of course, at that point, any kind feelings that may have existed between Henry and seller at some point were, urm, gone...long gone. Henry was pretty frustrated, feeling the seller was just being ridiculous and greedy. The seller probably thought something similar of Henry. Who knows. The she was supposed to come up here, and clear out her office, and take all her person stuff. More drama. Per contract, the seller was supposed to provide Henry with a list of everything personal she had removed from the practice. She refused, for a long time, to provide that list. Henry had lost any trust in her at that point, and wanted that list to make sure she wasn't taking any stuff she wasn't supposed to. The staff commented on how she had taken all the water bottles from the fridge, which weren't actually her's but belonged to one staff member. And little stuff like that made it feel like things were getting petty, and she may take any little thing she could get away with. Not fun.

Then I made the mistake of commenting about that on facebook. And before you knew it, Henry had gotten an email from the seller regarding my posts on FB. To this day I still haven't figured out how she got wind of that. Neither Henry nor I were friends with the seller on FB, nor with anyone from the area, or anyone else we may possibly have in common. Yet, somehow she heard about it. Urgh. More drama.

I'm telling you - business can get ugly when money is involved. Luckily by now I think we've managed to smooth a lot of things over, and have gotten back to a more amicable place. Thank goodness. Now the only drama we still have to deal with at times is the staff. Except, they're all really awesome and pretty drama-free. But we did have to replace someone who retired, and train a new biller. And now one other staff is quitting and switching to work for the Physical Therapist a few buildings down the road. It makes you wonder if she had issues with Henry, but oh well. Then another staff member may be leaving soon, because she's trying to separate from her spouse. And another one is in the middle of a divorce and now is hard-pressed for money, and we're worried we may lose her at some point simply because she needs more hours/money and we can only offer so much.

Sucky. The lamest part about the staff who's leaving now is that the area we're living in is soon going to be part of something called "enterprise zone". It's a program trying to revive the areas here, and promote business with all kinds of incentives. The biggest one is that if your business is in the "zone", you can get huge tax credits for any new employee you hire (about $40,000). It's huge! It should all be through in January, and then anyone we hire after that we'd get that credit. But now we may lose 2 employees before this happens, and may not be able to wait until we're part of the zone to rehire someone else. In other word, not only would we be losing 2 good employees, but we're also missing out on the tax credit - again. ( We were hoping the whole zone thing would already be through in the summer when we bought, and then all of our employees would have been 'new employees' because we just bought the business, and we could have gotten the tax credit for each one of them).

Oh well. I guess it's just money. Anyway, that's all the drama for now. That's if we ignore the several pairs of shades we've had stolen, or stuff like that (we've installed security cameras now).

Here are some pictures of the practice for those who were curious.