# Management services organization (MSO)

A structure where a clinician owns the practice and a company owns the rest.

Some states do not let anyone but a licensed clinician own a medical, dental, optometry, or veterinary practice. The MSO is the legal way around that: the clinician keeps the practice, and a separate company the buyer owns runs everything else and is paid for it. It is settled law but different in every state, so it belongs at the start of the process, not the closing.

In numbers: A dentist sells a $600k-[SDE](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/sde) practice to a buyer who cannot hold the clinical license; the MSO owns the equipment, leases, and staff and bills a [management fee](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/management-fee), while a licensed dentist owns the clinical entity.

Source: https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/management-services-organization
Not dated: A definition is editorial: what a term means, why it matters, and an example. None of it reads a source that can go stale, so there is no date to take and a stamped one would be the build time wearing a costume.

Site index for machines: https://searchspheresource.com/llms.txt