When you find a dental practice that you may be interested in purchasing, you will almost always be asked to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). We assist our clients with an NDA whether they are buying or selling a dental practice in the St. Louis region.
If the practice is being sold by the dentist personally, he or she may have not thought to require one. But, otherwise any practice being sold by a broker or any other professional will probably entail signing an NDA.
Maintaining Privacy When Evaluating a Practice
In order to provide you with a complete and detailed package of information about a given practice, you will be expected to keep that information private.
Production reports, Profit & Loss Statements, Fee Schedules, employee information, patient statistics and, at some point, tax returns – all are necessary for you as the buyer to evaluate the practice.
At the same time, it can only be provided to you with the assurance that it will be kept confidential and will not be provided to anyone not associated with the valuation and purchase of the practice.
The Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) is your agreement to keep this information confidential and private. You can share it with your spouse, accountant, banker, attorney and anyone else who is helping you decide about the purchase of the practice.
But this information needs to be kept confidential even if you don’t purchase the practice. Telling others about the income or overhead of a practice is not allowed and could be very harmful to the seller.
For example, if patients of the seller find out the practice is on the market, they might transfer to another dentist. If the staff finds out, they may seek another job before a buyer even appears.
We’re Here to Help with a Non-Disclosure Agreement
You should, of course, read the NDA before you sign it. But you should be willing to promise to use the information you will be given to determine if you are interested in purchasing the practice and that you will safeguard it from disclosure to parties unrelated to your decision to purchase or not purchase the practice.
Do you have questions about a Non-Disclosure Agreement? Or are you interested in buying or selling a dental practice in the St. Louis region?
Get in touch with us – we would be happy to serve you.
