Acquiring a Medical Practice: The Contract Machinery
The acquisition of a medical practice in Georgia works through the machinery of the sale contract: the norms of the Civil Code determine what is transferred to the buyer, which costs fall on the seller, and how the transferred value — including the patient base and know-how — is protected by the trade-secret regime. One thing must be said separately: the medical confidentiality duty connected with patients lives in a separate source — the Law on Medical Practice — and the acquisition transaction does not replace it.
The architecture of the transaction stands on the sale norms: the concept of sale, the transfer of rights, the duty to deliver a defect-free item, the protection of know-how, and the purchase option.