The Strait of Hormuz and Your Medical Practice

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The Prosperity Briefing

Keeping You Informed And Ahead

What the Strait of Hormuz
Reopening Means for
Your Medical Practice

June 25, 2026
4 min read

Oil prices. Financing costs. Practice valuations. Here’s how the de-escalation in the Middle East is starting to reshape the numbers behind your medical practice and what’s still unresolved.

Three weeks ago, when we first wrote about the Middle East conflict, the Strait of Hormuz disruption had triggered what the IEA called “the largest oil supply shock in the history of the global oil market.” Since then, the picture has genuinely shifted: the U.S. and Iran signed a framework agreement on June 17 to de-escalate and reopen the strait, tanker traffic has picked up to its highest level since the conflict began, and Brent crude has fallen from triple digits at its peak to the mid-$70s, a roughly 40% decline.

That’s real progress. It is not, however, the same as resolved. Mines remain in parts of the strait, traffic is still running well below pre-war levels, and Iran has flexed its leverage more than once since the agreement was signed, including a brief, largely symbolic re-closure announcement after an unrelated dispute over the Lebanon ceasefire. For medical practice owners, the question isn’t whether the headlines sound better. It’s what’s actually changed in the numbers that drive your financing, your staffing, and your medical practice’s value, and what hasn’t.

Don’t Let the Headlines Drive the Decision

Every geopolitical shock produces the same pattern in the data: markets and decision-makers overreact to the initial news in both directions: panic on the way down, premature confidence on the way up. LPL Research’s analysis of 20 major military conflicts since WWII found the S&P 500 recovered in 19 of those 20 cases within 28 days of the initial shock. The exception, 1973, is the one worth remembering, because it shared a feature with this crisis: a sustained energy shock landing on an already-inflationary economy.

We’re past that 28-day window now, and the recovery in oil prices has been real but gradual, not the sharp snapback some of those historical cases show. The practical lesson for a medical practice owner isn’t to act on the headline that the strait is reopening. It’s to separate what’s already moved (oil prices, supply, some shipping costs) from what hasn’t (interest rates, your actual borrowing costs), and make decisions based on which one matters for the specific question in front of you.

Financing Costs: The Part That Hasn’t Caught Up

Here’s the chain reaction that matters most for a medical practice that carries debt: lower oil prices ease inflation, easing inflation is what eventually gives the Federal Reserve room to cut interest rates, and interest rates set the cost of every loan tied to your practice: equipment, a buildout, an acquisition, a partner buy-in.

Right now, only the first link in that chain has moved. At its meeting last week, the Fed actually raised its inflation projections and signaled it’s leaning toward holding rates higher, or even raising them again, rather than cutting, with markets now pricing real odds of another hike before year-end. The 10-year Treasury yield, which heavily influences commercial lending rates, is still sitting close to where it was before the strait reopened.

This isn’t a contradiction — it’s a lag. Oil prices typically move months ahead of the inflation data and Fed decisions that follow from them. If the de-escalation holds through the rest of the 60-day negotiating window, easier financing conditions are the most likely next move for medical practice owners later this year. If it doesn’t hold, and the nuclear negotiations are the piece most likely to break it, we’re back to a higher-for-longer environment for borrowing costs.

If you’re weighing the timing of equipment financing, a buildout, or refinancing existing practice debt, this gap between what’s moved and what hasn’t is exactly the kind of thing worth a conversation rather than a guess. Talk to us before locking in a rate assumption either way.

Medical Practice Valuations and the M&A Market

If you’ve had any thought of selling your medical practice, bringing on a private equity-backed partner, or growing through acquisition, this is worth tracking closely. Healthcare consolidators, the groups actively buying physician and specialty practices, are highly sensitive to their own financing costs. When their borrowing gets cheaper, they tend to pay more for medical practices, move faster on deals, and chase volume more aggressively. When borrowing stays expensive, deal activity slows and valuations soften.

That makes M&A activity in healthcare one of the better early signals of where financing conditions are actually headed, often before the Fed makes anything official. A genuine pickup in medical practice acquisitions and improving valuation multiples over the next few months would be a meaningful tell that the rate relief this scenario implies is starting to show up in the real economy, not just in oil futures.

This is a genuinely complex area: valuation multiples, deal structure, and timing all interact in ways that are easy to misjudge from the outside. Connect with Rigby Financial Group if you’re actively considering a sale, an acquisition, or bringing on outside capital. We’re already helping clients think through exactly these decisions.

Where to Focus Your Attention Right Now

Rather than reacting to the next headline out of the Middle East, use this moment to pressure-test your position across four areas:

Labor costs and retention. Healthcare practices have faced persistent wage pressure for years. If inflation genuinely eases over the next two quarters, that’s one of the more direct ways this scenario could show up in your P&L: lower wage escalation and better retention, not just lower borrowing costs.

Financing timing. If you have an equipment purchase, buildout, or acquisition you’ve been timing around interest rates, the next two Fed meetings and the next two inflation reports are the events that will tell you whether to move now or wait.

Practice concentration risk. For most medical practice owners, the practice itself is the largest and least liquid asset on the balance sheet. A geopolitical shock like this one is a useful reminder that your personal financial independence shouldn’t be entirely contingent on a single sale or exit happening on a particular timeline.

Real estate exposure. If you own your clinic’s real estate or are considering a purchase, commercial lending rates are tied to the same Treasury yields discussed above. Commercial real estate has been one of the areas under the most pressure from high rates, and it stands to benefit the most if rates do eventually come down.

Our Role Right Now

Markets and geopolitics move faster than financial plans can be built around them. Our job, and what we’re doing actively with physician and specialty-practice clients right now, is to cut through the noise, stress-test financing and growth decisions against more than one realistic scenario, and make sure your strategy holds up whether this de-escalation continues or stalls.

It’s the same approach we brought clients through COVID, helping healthcare practices navigate PPP loans, tax credits, and a flood of confusing guidance in real time. Complexity is the constant in our work; turning it into a clear decision is the job.

Contact Rigby Financial Group for a free, no-obligation consultation. We’ll invest our time into you.

Until next time – Peace,

Eric

Principal, CPA/PFS

(504) 586-3050

erigby@therigbygroup.com

The information provided in this blog is for general informational and educational purposes only and is not intended to constitute, and should not be relied upon as, financial, accounting, tax, or legal advice. Cash flow forecasting and financial planning involve inherit risks and uncertainties, and results may vary significantly based on a variety of factors. By reading this blog, you acknowledge and agree to this disclaimer.

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