Your financial prep guide for MGMA Private Practice Conference 2027
MGMA is yet to schedule the 2027 Private Practice Conference; the 2026 edition ran May 3-6 in St. Louis. This is the MGMA event built specifically for independent practices fighting consolidation pressure. Sorso is not an exhibitor, sponsor, or speaker at this event. This is an independent prep guide for owners committed to staying independent.
The CFO read
The trap for owner-operators is mistaking clinical hours for management. Staying independent long term is a management outcome; it goes to the owners who protect time to run the business even when the schedule is full. If independence is the plan, this is the right room. Arrive with three numbers: your EBITDA, your overhead by category, and an honest answer about which hire your growth is waiting on.
— Stanislav Sukhinin, CFA · Founder, Sorso
What this event is
MGMA — the Medical Group Management Association — runs Focus conferences that each spend two to three days on a single discipline. This one exists for independent practices: the owners who have decided not to sell to a hospital system or PE platform, or at least not yet.
The agenda historically covers the economics of staying independent — competing for patients and staff against consolidated groups, understanding what your practice is worth, and building the management structure that makes independence sustainable rather than exhausting.
If you own an independent practice and consolidation pressure is part of your reality, this is the most directly relevant room MGMA offers. The checklist below is worth doing even if you never attend.
Why this matters for your bottom line
Hospital-owned and PE-backed competitors get their advantage from scale. An independent that closes the efficiency gap keeps its choices; one that does not eventually sells on someone else's timeline.
You do not need a sale plan to need a valuation. Your EBITDA multiple quietly prices every decision: adding a partner, investing in a location, dropping a payer.
Owner-operators run out of hats to wear. A CFO, RCM lead, or COO hire returns a multiple of its cost, provided the role comes with measurable outcomes attached rather than a title.
Banking terms, financing rates, and tax structure rarely get revisited in a busy practice, and the cost of leaving them unexamined shows up straight in take-home income.
What to look for
Case studies of practices that took acquisition offers and said no, and what that decision cost or saved them
Valuation workshops with the current EBITDA multiples for your specialty and region
Efficiency sessions built for practices under $20M in revenue
Owner compensation and tax structure: S-corp vs partnership vs LLC in practice, not in theory
GPO and supply-chain sessions on buying power for small groups
How to build a leadership layer without giving up control of the culture
Financial prep checklist
Review these before you go.
Establish your EBITDA number and find the going multiple for your specialty
Add up owner compensation into one figure: salary, distributions, benefits
Break overhead into categories and write down the three biggest in dollar terms
Name the roles whose sudden departure would hurt most; that is your dependency map
Review your banking terms, credit line, and equipment financing rates side by side
Benchmark your margin and revenue per provider against MGMA's independent-practice data for your specialty
Before MGMA Private Practice Conference 2027, get your own numbers straight
Walk in able to check every benchmark on the slides against your own numbers. Three ways owners start with us:
Fractional CFO
Strategic CFO for $3M–$50M clinics
Forecasts, location-level P&L, and exit prep. Starts at $4,000/mo.
Explore Fractional CFO →Accounting
Healthcare-specialist accounting
Books done right by people who understand clinic finance. Starts at $2,000/mo.
Explore Accounting →Free Assessment
A financial checkup before you go
Four minutes. See where your practice stands so every session is measured against your own numbers.
Take the assessment →
Founder of Sorso and a CFA charterholder. Before Sorso, Stan spent 19 years in corporate finance at institutions including UniCredit and Société Générale — managing a $450M loan portfolio and making senior partner at a major mezzanine lender by 29 — then built a fractional CFO firm exclusively for outpatient healthcare clinics.