July 2026 Benchmarking Report: Collections Tick Up
Collections are up but owner confidence is split, and costs aren't cooperating. The staffing and cost math to run before Q4.
An earlier summary of this report listed headline benchmark figures (median and top-quartile collections, overhead and hygienist wage) that came from a projection model, not measured data. We have removed them. We also corrected three figures a software error had truncated: the BLS dentist and hygienist wages and DANB's assistant pay, with the example that used it. The analysis below cites its sources directly.
Collections are finally moving in the right direction. Consumer dental spending hit $16 billion annualized and inflation-adjusted in May 2026, up 1% from a year ago and up 11% from pre-pandemic levels, according to the ADA Health Policy Institute's Q2 2026 dental economy update. One percent isn't a boom. But after two years of flat-to-down real spending, a positive print matters, and the operators we hear from are treating it that way. Dentist confidence in their own practices climbed to 60.6% in Q2 2026, which tells you owners are feeling the same tick up in their deposit accounts that HPI is seeing in the aggregate data.
Here's the catch, and it's the whole story of this report: your top line is growing at 1% while your cost lines are growing faster. The gap between those two numbers is where your year gets decided. Let's walk through what the data says and what to do about it.
Collections Are Up, But Confidence Is Split
There's a strange divergence in how dentists feel right now, and it's worth understanding because it explains a lot of the behavior we're seeing in the market.
On one hand, confidence in one's own practice rose to 60.6% in Q2 2026 per HPI. On the other hand, only about one-third of dentists said they were confident in the U.S. economy in Q4, per ADA News. Owners believe in their own chairs and their own teams. They don't believe in the macro environment.
That split is rational. The things you control, case acceptance, hygiene reactivation, fee schedules, are performing. The things you don't control, reimbursement rates and supply costs, are not. HPI's provider reimbursement rate index has risen 19% since January 2021, against 27% overall inflation over the same window. That's an 8-point real pay cut on every PPO dollar you've collected over five years, and it compounds quietly. It's also why more than one-third of dentists say they plan to drop at least some dental insurance networks, according to ADA News. That number would've been unthinkable in 2019. Now it's a mainstream strategy.
