Asset Protection for Medical and Dental Practices
We serve physician dentist business owners and investors in the medical and dental practice industry. Every medical or dental practice, whether a single practice owner or a group spanning several locations, carries a liability risk unlike most other businesses. Malpractice is not a risk tied to the entity. It is a risk that exists in the individual conduct of the physician or dentist, regardless of how many locations the practice operates. A solo practice owner needs a structure that separates personal wealth from a malpractice claim just as much as a growing practice does.
As a practice expands to multiple locations, this same risk compounds. A single incident at one location should never place other locations, shared assets, or personal wealth at risk. For a multi-location practice, the stakes are higher still. Proper legal structuring separates each location's liability while protecting the practice's shared assets and each owner's individual wealth.
Medical and Dental Practice Risks
At Deming Law, we go beyond formation to protect your practice and your assets. There are two common risks a professional entity will face. First, a professional entity does not protect an individual physician or dentist from personal liability for their own malpractice. That protection comes only from malpractice insurance and personal asset protection planning, never from the entity itself. Second, operating multiple clinic locations under one single entity means a catastrophic claim against one location exposes the assets and operations of every other location.
The professional entity does serve an important purpose. It protects each physician or dentist from a colleague's malpractice. Without it, one physician's or dentist's negligence could expose every other physician or dentist in the practice personally. This protection has a limit. It does not extend to their own conduct. Physicians and dentists remain personally exposed for their own malpractice regardless of how the practice entity is formed.
The Structure: Separate Entities Per Location
Deming Law structures multi-location practices so that each physical clinic location operates as its own separate professional entity, owned directly by its licensed physicians or dentists in compliance with Florida law. A claim arising at one location is confined to that location. It cannot reach the assets, patients, or operations of the other locations.
Above these clinic entities sits a holding company, connected through a lease arrangement rather than direct equity ownership. The holding company owns the practice's real estate and expensive equipment, such as imaging machines and surgical equipment. These are the assets a plaintiff wants most, and they are held out of reach of a claim against any single clinic. The holding company employs no staff and enters no client-facing contracts of its own. Its only relationship to the practice is the lease itself, which keeps it insulated from any claim arising out of patient care or employment. The lease payments move funds out of the clinic entity as a cost of doing business, so the clinic remains adequately capitalized for operations yet thin in net equity.
Individual Physician and Dentist Protection
Entity structuring protects the practice. It does not protect the individual physician or dentist. Each physician or dentist must carry individual malpractice insurance sized to their own risk. Beyond insurance, personal asset protection planning, including trusts and personal holding entities, protects an owner's individual wealth in the event a judgment exceeds insurance limits. We coordinate this personal layer alongside the practice's corporate structure so nothing is left exposed.
A Holding Company for What You Own
A physician's or dentist's malpractice risk comes from what they do. Personal wealth comes from what they own: a home, investments, savings, and other personal assets. These two categories must never sit in the same entity. Deming Law structures a personal holding entity to hold individual assets separately from practice interests. A judgment arising from professional conduct then has no path to reach personal wealth held inside it. For married physicians or dentists, Florida offers an additional layer of protection. Assets titled jointly with a spouse as tenants by the entirety are generally protected from a creditor of only one spouse. If a malpractice judgment is entered against the physician or dentist alone, properly titled marital assets can remain outside that creditor's reach.
Ownership Structure for Physician- and Dentist-Owned Practices
Medical and dental practices in Florida are typically structured as a professional association (PA) or a professional limited liability company (PLLC), both of which shield the practice's owners from the practice's general business liabilities. Florida law requires these entities to be owned exclusively by individuals licensed in that same profession. This restriction applies to the clinical entity itself, not to a holding company above it. A holding company that does not render medical or dental services holds no equity in the clinical entity. Instead, it owns the practice's real estate and equipment, which it leases to the clinical entity. This holding company structure protects these valuable assets from any claims that may arise from the clinical entity.
Ownership Structure for Larger Practices with Non-Physician and Corporate Investors
As a physician or physician group seeks to grow, often across several locations or with outside capital behind it, a different ownership structure becomes necessary. Florida permits non-physician ownership of a medical practice, but only if the practice has applied for and obtained a license through the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) as a Health Care Clinic (Chapter 400, Part X, Florida Statutes). This path typically appears in larger, multi-location practices or those bringing in outside investment, where ownership extends beyond the treating physicians themselves. Licensing requires appointing a medical director, a licensed physician responsible for overseeing clinical activities at each location, along with a Level 2 background screening for any owner holding five percent or more of the clinic, and proof of financial ability to operate, certified by a licensed CPA.
Dental practices follow a different route. Florida law generally requires a dental practice to be owned by licensed dentists, so non-dentist investors participate through a dental service organization (DSO), a separate business entity that owns the business side of the practice. A dentist-owned professional entity continues to hold the clinical license, connected to the DSO by a long-term services agreement.
Whether structured as an AHCA-licensed Health Care Clinic for a medical practice or through a DSO for a dental practice, the business side of the practice is handled through a management services organization (MSO), a separate business entity that contracts with the clinical practice to provide administrative infrastructure, staffing, insurance billing operations, and equipment, while clinical decisions remain solely with the physicians or dentists. A management services agreement between the two entities sets the fee the clinical practice pays the MSO, allocating funds away from the clinical entity and into the MSO through this contractual relationship rather than direct ownership. This shields those funds from a claim against the clinical practice, achieved through the same type of leases, service agreements, and management arrangements used throughout Deming Law's other corporate structures. If the practice's real estate is owned rather than leased, a separate entity is typically formed to hold the property, keeping that asset out of reach of any claim against the clinic.
Flat-Fee Pricing
Our services are based on a flat fee structure, providing you with upfront, transparent pricing for the work we deliver. Our objective is the same as yours, to protect your business and see it succeed, as your trusted legal partner. Therefore, you can reach out freely without worrying about additional costs. We encourage you to call or email us when you have a question or concern, because better communication leads to better outcomes. We built our practice on a strong base of long-term and referred clients as a result of being genuinely invested in their success.
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