An independent physician network platform
Acquisition Strategy Build
A three-month engagement that found the lever, sized it, and put a board-ready plan in front of the sponsor. The board authorized diligence on a target that would double the provider network.
THE SITUATION
The platform had committed capital and a mandate, and no strategy on paper beyond it. No framework for which physicians to target or what to offer them. No way to decide whether to build the operating infrastructure it needed or buy it. And an acquisition opportunity on the table that could move the thesis forward by years, with no way to tell whether it was the right deal and no structure for making the case to a board that would have to authorize significant capital.
WHAT I BUILT
The work ran the way the diagnostic runs now: find the lever, size it, hand the board a plan it can act on.
• The strategy, codified. Three priorities that defined where the platform would focus, each with measurable objectives: expand the network, empower practices, elevate performance in value-based contracts. They became the operating language for evaluating every initiative and investment.
• The offer, designed. A three-tier affiliation model matched to physician circumstance, from low-commitment network participation through administrative support to full employment and continuity, with a practice support matrix and the legal entity structure to carry all three.
• The lever, found. The solution design showed which capabilities the platform had and which it was still building. Those gaps surfaced the acquisition logic: buy readiness rather than build it, when a target advances the priorities and the competitive window is closing.
• The lever, sized. An M&A evaluation framework anchored to the three priorities, then a business case for a specific target: a multi-specialty platform of roughly 100 providers and 50 locations with its own surgery centers and revenue around $80M. The case quantified roughly $20M in facility cost savings from moving surgical work out of hospital outpatient departments, and showed the acquisition doubling the provider base while closing capability gaps the platform would otherwise spend years building.
THE RESULT
• The board authorized diligence spend on the business case, and the platform moved from deliberation to active deal execution
• The platform's network grew from 97 to 170 providers during the engagement
• A three-month engagement, delivered over seven, because each answer opened the next question: strategy to solution design, solution design to capability gaps, capability gaps to the acquisition case
When I left, the three-priority framework was the platform's operating language, and every investment was evaluated against it. The three-tier model structured how the platform engaged physicians. The evaluation criteria and the business-case method were the template for the next inorganic decision, and the board communication architecture, how to present a capital request with structured rationale and quantified impact, was reusable without me.
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