Dan Deighan, founder and CEO of Deighan Financial Advisors and a frequent talk-show guest on CNBC about the industry, said the purpose of the changes is to tackle “non-accounting creativity,” such as what plagued Lehman Brothers and other banking houses.





“I don’t think the basic changes were meant to really affect companies in the health care business – they were really designed to affect companies in the finance business,” he said.

Nonetheless, there is still plenty of conversation and speculation about how this will affect doctors’ offices, imaging centers and hospitals that lease big-ticket equipment, like MRI and CT scanners. Opinions are mixed, mainly because the regulation isn’t finalized.

Deighan thinks, by and large, it will be a non-issue.

“I don’t think that that is going to affect leases and leasing companies and people that want to lease equipment. I think it’s going to wash itself out,” he said.

“What it should do on the balance sheet is balance out,” he added. “It’s just that if you were going to be an investor in an MRI center or larger practice you’re now going to see both entries on the balance sheet, whereas in the past, you didn’t see it.”

But not everyone thinks its impact will be so soft. Michael Terry, president of Premier Asset Finance Group Inc., said it would fall heaviest on those most sensitive to their balance sheets, which could be bigger hospitals and hospitals systems that have covenants with their banks and bond-holders. These covenants require the organizations to stick to certain debt ratios, which the new rules could make harder.

“A lot of clients are extremely sensitive to what this change will do to their debt covenants if they have to re-classify their leases,” Terry observed.

But all are agreed that the traditional attractions of leasing – no up-front cash and manageable monthly payments, with the lessor taking on the risks of ownership – will remain drivers.

“A smaller practice or group practice is looking more at technology and cash flow,” Terry said. And in a recent article, leasing expert Shawn Halliday, author of “A Guide to Equipment Leasing” and “The Handbook of Equipment Leasing,” said a survey of CFOs showed that more than 60 percent “would not alter their lease financing strategies based on these new rules.”

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