Distressed Practices & Receivership
When a practice is in trouble, somebody still has to run it.
Most advisors arrive with a recommendation. A business under pressure needs someone who can operate it while the situation gets resolved, keep collections moving, keep the team, and prepare the asset for whatever comes next.
The problem
Distress is an operating problem before it is a legal one.
By the time a lender calls a note or a court appoints a receiver, the operating decisions that determine the outcome have already been made or missed. Payroll timing, collections, vendor terms, staffing, and lease obligations move faster than any process built to resolve them.
A practice in that position is still seeing patients. Money is still coming in and going out every day. The question is whether anyone is managing it while everything else is being worked out.
What it usually looks like
The signals rarely arrive one at a time.
Any one of these can be managed. Several together mean the clock is already running.
- A covenant has been missed, or the next one will be
- Payroll is being timed against deposits rather than a calendar
- Receivables have aged past the point where anyone is chasing them
- Vendors have moved you to prepay or shortened terms
- Providers or key staff have started leaving
- A landlord or lender has begun putting things in writing
- The financial reporting no longer matches what the bank account says
- A sale process has stalled, or a buyer has retraded
Who we work with
Two very different clients, one capability.
The work is the same either way. Somebody has to run the business while the situation is resolved, and the operating result materially affects what options remain and what the asset may be worth.
Before it becomes a process
This is where there is usually the most room to preserve value, in the months before anyone else is appointed to make decisions.
- Cash forecasting and a defensible thirteen week view
- Collections and receivables recovery
- Vendor, lease and payer renegotiation
- Staffing and provider capacity decisions
- Preparing the financial picture for a lender conversation
- Positioning the practice for sale rather than for liquidation
Once a process exists
A receiver needs an operator who understands healthcare practices specifically, can stabilize the business quickly, and reports in a form the court and the lender can use.
- Day one stabilization of payroll, banking and collections
- Continuity of patient care and clinical staffing
- Operating reporting on a defined cadence
- Vendor and contract triage
- Asset preparation and marketing support
- Transaction coordination through closing
How it works
Stabilize first. Decide second.
Nothing useful gets decided while the numbers are still moving underneath the decision. The first job is to stabilize the business and establish what is actually true.
Assess
A fast read on cash, collections, payroll obligations, debt, leases, vendor terms and staffing. Days rather than weeks, because the situation does not wait.
Stabilize
Protect payroll, restore collections, triage what has to be paid and what can be renegotiated, and stop the decisions that are making it worse.
Operate
Run the business on a cadence with reporting the owner, the lender, or the court can rely on, while the larger situation is resolved.
Resolve
Position the practice for whatever the right outcome turns out to be. A sale, a refinance, a wind-down, or a return to normal operation under the same owner.
Engagement
Scoped to the situation.
Distressed engagements do not price the way planned work does, because the scope is set by the circumstances rather than by a menu. We scope the first phase against what is actually in front of you and quote it before anything begins.
Where a court, a lender or counsel is involved, we work within whatever reporting and approval structure that process requires.
XpoNential provides operating and management services. We are not a law firm, an accounting firm, or a licensed insolvency practitioner, and nothing here is legal, tax, accounting or insolvency advice. Legal, tax and court process work is performed by the licensed professionals engaged on the matter.
Where it sits
Measure, prioritize, operate, grow, transition.
Every engagement runs on the same standard. Most owners start with a measurement, and each stage builds on what it finds.
Comprehensive Practice Review
Measure the whole business against one published standard.
Practice Review and Blueprint
Decide what matters most for the business and for the life it funds.
Distressed & Receivership
Stabilize the business, then run it while the situation is resolved.
Groups, acquisitions and associates
Add locations, providers and partners on the same standard.
Sale and Transition Advisory
Strengthen value and change ownership when you choose to.
The sooner the call happens, the more options are still open.
Thirty minutes on Zoom. Tell us where the business is and what is closing in on it, and we will tell you plainly whether we can help and what it would take.