How Succession Planning Can Simplify the Transition From Employment to Ownership

In our “Physician Voices” podcast series, doctors share their unique stories, expert perspectives, and helpful insights. In this episode, we welcome Ashley Wade-Vuturo, MD, and Marina Arutyunyan, DO, co-owners of Fairfax Gynecology Group in Northern Virginia.

Our discussion focuses on succession planning, from navigating the uncertainty of early phases to setting long-term goals that define your legacy (and how a partner can support you throughout the process).

This excerpt of our conversation is edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full episode below and find us on your preferred platform.

I understand you both joined the practice as employed clinicians in 2023 before becoming co-owners a little over a year later. Can you please share what factors made that transition a success?

Dr. Wade-Vuturo: Our situation was unusual in that we weren’t actively looking to acquire a practice, but that’s life. Sometimes these amazing opportunities come up, which is what it did in our case. We’ve both been clinicians for a long time and we know medicine, we know how to do medicine, but being owner-operators of a practice was something new for both of us. So an essential piece in our transition and succession planning was having good partners, consultants, and advisors who knew the ins and outs of the business side of medicine, the operational side, and the legal side. Having all of those partners and people lined up before, during, and after was really instrumental.

Dr. Arutyunyan: Every practice has its own way of functioning, its own handprint of how you provide care, how to see patients, how patients come to see us, the referral basis. Especially for a practice like ours that has been around for several decades with a patient population that’s been with us for a long time. Making the transition as seamless as possible for our patients and having their trust are incredibly important.

Succession planning is a way for doctors to preserve the legacy that they dedicated their careers to creating. What would you like your legacies to be?

Dr. Wade-Vuturo: A huge thing we’ve worked on is creating a culture and environment where the staff are happy, they feel respected, we’re helping with their career goals, and they feel well-supported in their compensation. You can’t have a practice that sees 12,000 patients a year without a staff, so a happy, healthy staff is essential for the functioning of the practice.

And then, even though we’re small, really intentionally framing how we provide care to be patient-centered, not just in terms of good outcomes but also in terms of experience. A lot of gynecology offices use paper gowns, because paper gowns are cheaper than what we have, which are cloth gowns. But we both feel very strongly (and there’s lots of literature, and patients talk about this) that having a GYN exam is already such a vulnerable experience anyway, so having a piece of proper clothing makes people feel so much more comfortable. It’s an important part of the experience. That’s something we’ve committed to: We’re always going to have cloth gowns. We’re never going to squeeze our margins so hard that we go to paper gowns. That makes a difference, because it’s a small drop in the bucket of changing people’s views and beliefs about gynecologic care. So I do think for our patients, that is our legacy as we’re shaping the practice.

Dr. Arutyunyan: Absolutely. I completely agree and echo that having one good experience that teaches you, “This is how I should be treated in this setting,” goes a long way in other settings in the future. You know how you should be treated as a patient. Being able to provide that individualized, respectful, shared-decision healthcare is what I want for every woman.

Marina Arutyunyan, DO, MPH, believes in cultivating a trusting, lasting relationship with her patients. She is particularly skilled in minimally invasive surgery and counseling women on the medical challenges they may face at all stages of life.

Ashley Wade-Vuturo, MD, is a DC-area native and completed her medical school and residency at the University of Maryland. As a clinician and practice owner, her guiding principle is helping patients live healthy, empowered, and fulfilling lives.