Dental Economics
A practice running 98% collections on $1.25 million of production is quietly losing about $60,000 a year, and the ratio itself is the reason nobody goes looking for it. That is roughly 28% of the $215,320 the average general dentist earned in 2025, according to ADA Health
Financial Strategy
A $195,000 down payment is the largest single check most practice owners will ever write, and in year one that building will hand back roughly $16,000, none of it in cash. That isn't a scandal. It's just arithmetic almost nobody runs before the broker&
Dental Economics
A practice collecting $1 million a year with 80% of that money arriving across a card terminal hands its processor roughly $27,040 annually. Run the same volume at the rate the ADA says practices should be targeting, 2.1% to 2.2%, and the bill drops to about $17,
Financial Strategy
Finance $360,000 of treatment a year on a 10% merchant plan and you've handed the lender $36,000 before the lab invoice even arrives. Run the identical cases through a 1.9% plan and the bill is $6,840. Same chairs, same clinicians, same patients saying yes.
Financial Strategy
A median SBA dental acquisition loan in 2026 is $853,000, and at today's pricing it will take $10,689 out of your practice every month for ten years before you pay yourself a dime. That's the number that matters, and almost nobody shops for it.
Insurance
A practice submitting a million dollars of insurance claims a year at the national average denial rate is handing about $28,500 annually to paperwork it will never collect. That money does not show up as a loss anywhere an owner looks: it hides inside write-off lines, inside a billing
Dental Economics
In the average general practice, an hour of doctor chair time collects somewhere near $679 and keeps roughly $258 of it. The hour right after that one, the one nobody filled, still costs about $326 in rent, payroll and equipment notes, and collects nothing at all. That gap is the
Insurance
Hold your fees flat for one more year while your costs move the way they've moved lately, and a $1.2M practice quietly hands back roughly $36,000 in profit without a single patient noticing. ADA Health Policy Institute data shows practice revenues up 1.4% against expenses
Financial Strategy
A 4% Fee Increase Is the Floor, Not the Answer If your fee schedule has sat still for two years, you have handed roughly seven percent of your pricing power to your suppliers, your lab, and your hygienist's raise. The Producer Price Index for dental care services rose
Financial Strategy
Sell 300 memberships at $33 a month and you've just signed a $118,800 fee schedule with yourself, and unlike a PPO contract, nobody is going to audit it for you. That's the part owners miss when they bolt a membership plan onto the practice: you
Insurance
Two Plans, One Schedule, $54,012 There are two PPOs on your schedule right now. One writes off 38 cents on the dollar and the other writes off 15, and the one you think is bleeding you is earning you $360 more per chair hour than the one you'
Insurance
A practice collecting $1 million a year with a 35% average write-off is handing roughly $350,000 in billed fees to insurers before it pays a single hygienist, according to Veritas Dental Resources citing the ADA's 2023 Survey of Dental Fees, which puts PPO write-offs at 30% to