Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
Donna Block, an obstetrician and gynecologist who worked for years in a large Edina medical clinic, figures she has about 15 years left in her professional life. She has started Clinic Sofia, just around the corner from her old workplace in the Southdale Medical Building, so she can spend those years taking care of women’s health the way she wants to.
“We’re giving women the tools to stay healthy,” Block says. She shows off her clinic’s waiting area, which she wants to feel like a living room. It’s dominated by a large painting of an old-fashioned mother and children.
In the old clinic, “you jammed in as many patients as you could. It’s been like that for three or four years,” she says. “In medicine, there’s more ‘business as speed’ to it, and the priorities have changed. I want to make it clear that we are here to take care of patients.”
Block started taking courses a few years ago for an MBA in medical management from the University of St. Thomas. “I kind of understood about finances, but I needed fine-tuning.”
She hired a top-notch accountant and attorney, she says, to help her through the mounds of paperwork and regulatory hurdles that go with starting a medical business.
A good friend begged her not to name her clinic “Edina OB/GYN,” or something else run-of-the-mill. A focus group began talking about Sophia, the Greek goddess of birth and fertility, and the name was born.
Block says she is not naïve about the realities of modern medicine “Boy, is it hard to provide care when you’re feeling so squeezed by the payers,” she says.
She says she takes the same approach to business as she does to medicine: “I kind of go by the book” in both areas.
“We believe women are the hub of families. If you can stay healthy, then all the people in your circle will be healthy.”
Clinic Sofia will offer laser hair removal, and mammograms are down the hall. “I want you to come in, get your stuff done and get back to doing what your family expects of you, what your business expects of you,” Block says. She plans to add two doctors in the early part of 2005.
Block says she’s funding the start-up with loans and equity in her house: “It’s a little scary, but you know what? I refuse to fail.”
Donna Block, M.D., Clinic Sofia: 952.922.7600; bl******@*ol.com
