For the attorneys, CPAs, bankers, brokers, and senior physicians who get the call first.

When to refer a physician to Doc2Doc

The cleanest referrals are independent psychiatrists who are early enough in the thinking that an organized planning file would make the later advisor meeting more productive. Common triggers we see from referral partners:

• Owner is one to five years from likely retirement, slowdown, or transition, and is not yet sure which path is right.
• Owner has been approached informally by a buyer, successor candidate, or hospital affiliation but has no organized file.
• Owner is a current client on an unrelated matter (estate, tax, divorce, real estate) and the practice keeps coming up as an unresolved question.
• Owner has a health, family, or scheduling change that has compressed their timeline and they need a path decision before commitments are made.
• Owner has a panel-continuity concern (controlled-substance prescribing, high-acuity patients, single-clinician dependency) that needs planning before any sale or wind-down conversation.
• You are about to be asked questions you cannot efficiently answer without a clean baseline file (P&L normalization, payer assignability, panel composition, transferability).

The file the physician brings back

By the time a referred psychiatrist gets back to you, the file should be more organized. The Workup is meant to make your hour more productive, not duplicate your work.

Work that stays with licensed advisors

• We do not represent the doctor in a transaction, draft transaction documents, or negotiate with buyers, successors, or counterparties.
• We do not provide formal appraisals, fairness opinions, or broker opinions of value. Our planning ranges are explicitly indicative.
• We do not provide legal, tax, accounting, credentialing, or clinical advice. Where the work needs a licensed professional, we say so and route there.
• We do not collect, store, or analyze PHI as part of the early Workup. Identifiable patient information stays out of our hands.
• We do not solicit named doctors based on age, retirement status, accepting-patient status, or other inferred personal vulnerability.
• We do not pay referral fees that would create regulatory or fiduciary concerns. Referrals are professional, not transactional.

How the business-only review works

The intake asks for aggregate business and operations data: collections, expenses, owner clinical hours, active panel size, monthly visit volume, payer-mix percentages, staffing, billing model, EHR vendor, lease status, referral-source categories, controlled-substance prescribing share at the panel level, telehealth share, and broad acuity distribution. The doctor never submits patient names, dates of birth, addresses, chart excerpts, psychotherapy notes, appointment-level detail, prescriptions linked to individuals, or identifiable clinical scenarios.

Where a question would otherwise require identifiable patient detail, we ask for an aggregate description instead. For example: "approximately what share of the active panel has at least one Schedule II prescription on file, and how is PDMP review documented?" We do not ask for a patient list. If the question genuinely needs identifiable detail, we route it to the doctor's counsel rather than answering it ourselves.

Documents shared with Doc2Doc by the doctor (P&L, payer-mix summaries, lease, contracts) should also be redacted of patient-level information before sharing. We do not need it to do our work, and we do not want it on file.

Because Doc2Doc's intake avoids identifiable patient information, we do not operate as a Business Associate under HIPAA and do not execute BAAs as part of our standard engagement. If any document shared with us is later found to contain patient-level information, notify us immediately. We will return or destroy it and will not use it in our analysis. If your client's situation may require sharing documents that could contain PHI, consult with counsel about how to handle redaction before sharing with us.

When it helps, and when it does not

Questions advisors can ask physicians before sending them to us

If you have ten minutes with the physician, the answers to these five questions usually decide whether a Doc2Doc Workup is the right next step or whether they need a different first call.

1. "What does your timeline look like: months, a year, three years?" Anything short of two months is usually wind-down territory and probably needs counsel before a Workup.
2. "Have you signed anything, agreed to anything, or made any verbal commitments to a buyer, successor, landlord, payer, or staff member about the transition?" If yes, route to counsel first.
3. "Do you have at least 12 months of P&L you can put your hands on, even if it's messy?" If yes, the Workup will be easier to use immediately.
4. "How many of your active patients are on controlled-substance prescriptions, roughly?" A meaningful share concentrates continuity risk and shapes the path.
5. "Are you primarily worried about price, about your patients, or about getting the timing right?" The honest answer tells you whether Doc2Doc, counsel, a broker, or a CPA is the better first stop.

Boundaries we keep visible

• No PHI in early diligence. The doctor should not be sending patient-level information to anyone in the first phase.
• No formal appraisal language. Planning ranges are indicative; we say so on every output.
• No brokerage positioning. Doc2Doc does not represent buyers or practice owners in transactions.
• No targeting of named physicians based on inferred age, retirement status, accepting-patient status, or vulnerability.
• No promises about price or buyers. The Workup tells the doctor what the file says, not what a market will pay.
• Founder review on every report. No automated send.

If a referred client ever feels pushed toward a transaction by Doc2Doc, that is not how we work and we want to know about it.

Where advisor feedback helps

Doc2Doc is in active build-out. We are particularly interested in feedback on disclaimer language, referral handoff, what your clients tend to prepare too late, and where a business-only planning report would or would not be appropriate in your practice. A 20-minute conversation is a real contribution; we treat it as professional time.