There a lot of reasons why a doctor in the Peoria area may need to figure out how much her medical practice is worth, assuming of course that she is in business for herself. For example, she may wish to break off from her partners to take a new and better direction in her career, or she may have a hospital or larger practice interested in acquiring her patients and her expertise.

On perhaps a less happy note, the doctor may also be going through a divorce. In such cases, his medical practice will likely be subject to property division between his spouse and him. The judge will not necessarily give the doctor’s spouse some share of the practice, but the judge will factor the value of the practice in to its overall fair division of assets.

As is the case with other complex business assets, divvying up a medical practice can be difficult and complicated, particularly when there are no plans to sell the practice and the person doing the dividing is not a doctor or medical expert.

As such, the best advice for putting a value on a medical practice is to get an experienced family law attorney involved. Among other things, the attorney can identify and communicate with a suitable expert who can accurately and persuasively estimate the business’s value.

Still, there are some general principles for a doctor to keep in mind should he need to put a value on his business. Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that putting a value on a medical practice is not just about counting revenues and accounts receivable or estimating the value of one’s office and one’s medical equipment.

Indeed, much of a medical practice’s value comes from what are called intangible assets, and include things like customer goodwill, the doctor’s reputation and the like. Such items must be considered, even though they are hard to estimate reliably.