A medical practice is one of the few businesses that delivers its service, documents it thoroughly, bills correctly — and then waits a month and a half or more to be paid, by a third party that was never in the room. Rent, salaries, malpractice premiums and lease payments do not wait with you. When a practice needs to fund something definite and sizable against that backdrop, a business term loan is usually the cleanest of the medical practice loans on offer: a fixed sum, a fixed schedule, and a cost you can model before you commit.
Why Medical Practices Use Term Loans
Begin with the reimbursement cycle. Forty-five to ninety days between service and payment is normal, and it sits directly against a cost base that is almost entirely fixed. Your clinical staff, your front desk, your billing team and your suite are the same expense in a slow month as a busy one. That structural lag means a practice can be genuinely profitable on paper and still be unable to write a large check in any given week, which is a financing problem rather than a performance problem.
Then there is equipment. Imaging systems, laser platforms, updated exam and diagnostic technology, a serious EHR migration — these are six-figure commitments that patients and referring physicians increasingly treat as table stakes. Funding them out of accumulated distributions means deferring them for years, and in most specialties the practice that defers is the practice referrals quietly route around.
The third category runs on someone else’s clock. Partner buy-ins, associate transitions and the purchase of a retiring physician’s practice all carry hard deadlines set by a legal document, not by your cash position. Those transactions are exactly what a term loan is built for: a known amount, a known closing date, and a repayment schedule you agree to in advance.
How a Term Loan Is Structured
The practice gets the entire sum up front and pays it back in set installments, which means the total cost is locked at the outset rather than depending on how you use the money. That predictability is the trade-off against a revolving facility: less flexibility, far more certainty. For a practice modeling whether new equipment or a partner buy-in pencils out, a payment you can drop into a spreadsheet on day one is worth a great deal.
| Loan amounts | $20,000 – $1,000,000 |
| Terms | 6 months – 5 years |
| Funding speed | As soon as same day for smaller amounts; 2–5 days for larger deals |
| Best for | Expansions, renovations, acquisitions, and defined one-time investments |
| Typical medical practice deal | $100,000 – $1,000,000 |
| Minimum credit score | 550+ FICO — a secondary criterion, see below |
| Basic requirements | 1+ year in business, $20K+ monthly revenue, 550+ FICO, business bank account |
Examples From Practice
An associate at a multi-physician orthopedic group in Nassau County was offered partnership with a $250,000 buy-in due at signing. A term loan funded the position on the closing date, and the payment was sized against the distribution increase the equity itself produced — the transaction essentially financed by what it created.
A Manhattan multi-specialty office wanted in-house imaging rather than referring the studies out. They borrowed $400,000 to acquire and install the system, deliberately leaving their operating cash untouched so a slow reimbursement quarter would not turn a growth decision into a payroll question.
A primary care group changing billing platforms knew that claims would sit unprocessed for weeks during the migration. A $150,000 term loan covered the gap on a defined schedule, which was cleaner than repeatedly explaining a growing operating overdraft to their bank. These are composite illustrations of common structures, not descriptions of identifiable practices.
What About Timing?
There is a real seasonal pattern in medicine and it works against you at the start of the year. Deductibles reset in January, patients postpone elective and non-urgent visits until they have met them, and volume sags through the first quarter. The reimbursement lag then pushes the financial consequence of that slow quarter into spring, so a practice often feels the January dip in April. Two practical conclusions follow. If you are financing something with a fixed deadline — a buy-in, a lease signature — arrange it in the fourth quarter, when your trailing statements reflect a strong year-end rather than a soft January. And if you are financing equipment, installing it before the deductible-driven volume returns is worth more than installing it a quarter later at the same price.
Why Practices Choose Marcas
Your file is handled by one advisor from the first conversation through funding — not routed through a queue and not restarted every time you call. That advisor will ask about your payer mix and your collection cycle before proposing any structure, because a repayment schedule that ignores how your money actually arrives is a schedule you will end up fighting. Behind that sits fifteen years of experience across banking, real estate and capital markets, and more than $100 million placed with operating businesses. You can read how a few of those files came together in our success stories, or simply contact the team and describe the situation.
What About Your Credit Score?
Practices can qualify from a 550 score, a lower bar than most banks use, because credit is not where our underwriting begins. For a term loan like this, it is a secondary criterion. More important is the practice itself: its time open, monthly collections, and how the business account is managed. A practice with steady insurance and patient receipts and a limited credit file is often better placed than an applicant with a strong score and uneven collections.
Be clear on the limits: below 550 the door is not automatically shut, and above it approval is not assured. Credit determines whether the application is reviewed, while the practice’s financials determine the result, which is why you speak with an advisor rather than filling out a form and waiting.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a newer practice qualify, or does student debt on the personal side rule us out?
Neither is automatically disqualifying. The baseline is one year in business, roughly $20,000 in monthly revenue and a business bank account. Physician student debt is a familiar feature of these files and is read in the context of the income the practice actually produces rather than as a raw balance. A practice a year past opening with steady collections is a workable applicant; we will tell you directly if the file is not there yet and what would change that.
How fast can a medical practice get funded?
Smaller amounts can fund the same day. Larger transactions — the six-figure equipment purchases and buy-ins that make up most practice lending — generally take two to five business days, because they involve more documentation rather than more deliberation. If you have a closing date, tell us at the outset and we will work backward from it.
Can a term loan be used to bridge slow insurance reimbursements?
It can, though it is worth being precise about the situation. A term loan suits a defined, bounded gap — a payer transition, a billing system migration, a credentialing delay with a known end. For a lag that recurs every month as a permanent feature of your payer mix, a revolving facility is usually the better fit, since you would otherwise be repaying a fixed loan while the same gap reopens. We will talk through which one your circumstances actually call for.
What does a term loan cost?
Cost is a function of amount, term length, your practice’s revenue and time in operation, and the credit profile behind it. Longer terms lower the monthly payment and raise the total paid; shorter terms do the reverse. We put the complete structure — payment, term, total cost — in front of you on paper before you commit to anything, and we avoid quoting rates in a vacuum because a number produced before reading your file is not a real number.
Get Started
Five minutes to apply, a decision in hours, and funding that can move as quickly as your closing date requires.
Call (917) 540-3292 or apply for a term loan.
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