Dental Economics
A general practice collecting $1 million in 2021 that did nothing wrong, held every cost line to the national average, and left its PPO fee schedules untouched is about $51,300 a year poorer in owner income today. Not one invoice was mismanaged. The money left through a door nobody
Financial Strategy
COGS Percentage: Specialty vs General Practice: ADA HPI benchmark data and what it means for your practice.
Financial Strategy
Dental Practice Overhead by State 2026: ADA HPI benchmark data and what it means for your practice.
Practice Management
An operatory costs real money to plumb and then costs money every month whether or not a patient is sitting in it. The best peer-reviewed estimate available says that adding 10% more operatories buys a general practice about 1.2% more patient visits, while adding 10% more chairside hours in
Financial Strategy
The average general practice in this country bills $965,660 a year, and the average practice never sees about $86,900 of it. That figure comes from putting two numbers side by side: the ADA Health Policy Institute puts 2025 average gross billings per dentist in private practice at $965,
Financial Strategy
An associate buy-in is four decisions, not one: what you're buying (stock or LLC units), what price the stake is set at, how you pay for it, and what happens when the partnership ends badly. Most deals that blow up were priced fine. They fell apart on the
Financial Strategy
Here's what good looks like: 75% of your accounts receivable sitting in the 0-30 day bucket, 15% in 31-60, no more than 10% past 60 days, and roughly 3% in 90+. Total AR should equal about one month of production, and you should be collecting 98 cents of
Insurance
One general practice added up its PPO discounts and found they were eating more than 15% of total gross production, the equivalent of working about a month and a half a year for free, according to Dental Economics. Another practice in the same reporting dropped its networks badly and watched
Insurance
A practice billing $422,500 across three routine codes deposits $235,075. The missing $187,425 isn't theft, bad billing, or a front-desk problem: it's the contracts the owner signed, and most owners can't say which contract is responsible for which share of it.
Financial Strategy
If your PPO write-offs are running above 40% of gross production, you have a problem worth solving this quarter. Above 50%, you're running a practice whose main product is discounted dentistry and whose main customer is an insurance company. Below 30%, you're either lightly contracted or
Practice Management
On a $300,000 seller note, the difference between the 3% rate your broker will tell you is "market" and the 9% the IRS will let you charge is about $108,500 in interest over ten years. Same practice, same buyer, same closing date, same risk that the
Practice Management
A $2.6 million offer letter and a $1.82 million wire are the same deal. One of those numbers is marketing. The gap is the earnout, the rollover equity, and the quiet assumption that you'll keep producing like an owner while getting paid like an associate. Here&