Dental practices
A DSO and a private buyer are not asking your practice the same question.
Dental practices sell into two different markets. A retiring dentist selling to an individual is priced one way. A dental service organization buying to add a location prices on a different measure entirely, and runs diligence to match. Before either conversation, the practical question is whether your production, collections, and agreements say the same thing as each other.
The record
What your record already holds.
- Production and collections reports, by provider and by period
- Insurance participation, fee schedules, and write-off history
- Associate employment agreements, and any non-compete or non-solicit terms
- Hygiene recall and active patient reporting
- Equipment schedules, service records, and finance or lease agreements
- Premises lease, options, and any assignment terms
- Referral relationships and specialist arrangements
The questions
The questions worth answering.
- “Does our collections history reconcile to our production reporting?”
- “How much revenue depends on plans we could lose, and on which participation terms?”
- “What do the associate agreements say about non-compete and non-solicit on a sale?”
- “How many patients are genuinely active, and how is that counted?”
- “Does the premises lease survive a change of ownership, and on what terms?”
- “Which procedures depend on the owner dentist personally?”
Key-person risk
When someone leaves, the reasoning shouldn’t leave with them.
In an owner operated practice, the owner is usually the largest producer and the reason many patients stay. A buyer prices what happens to production when that person reduces hours or leaves, and whether the record shows patients attached to the practice or to the dentist. Verelume is designed to make that answerable from the record rather than from recollection.
High-stakes moments
When the record has to answer.
A DSO approach
Group buyers arrive with a standard diligence pack and compare your practice to others they have bought. Inconsistencies between production, collections, and reported patient counts are found early and priced.
Associate transitions
When an associate leaves, the questions are what their agreement said and which patients were theirs. Both live in the record, and both matter to a buyer assessing retention.
Owner reduction of hours
Buyers model what the practice produces without the owner at full capacity. That model rests on whether the record separates the owner's production from everyone else's.
The published record
What the sources actually say, and what they do not.
The publishers here do not merely differ on the range, they measure different things. One reports the private sale convention on owner earnings and on a percentage of annual gross collections. Its other figure applies to group acquisitions and is measured on earnings after paying a replacement dentist, which is a different number for the same practice. A second publisher reports on earnings banded by revenue. A third reports the middle half of practices recorded as sold, on owner earnings, and that band overlaps most of the private sale band. So the record does agree with itself on owner earnings and stops agreeing the moment the measure changes. Comparing across the measures is not possible, and converting between them would manufacture a figure. Our estimator leads with what dental practices actually sold for, taken from the transaction source alone, and reports the disagreement between the rest in the record beneath rather than resolving it.
1.2x to 2.5x owner earnings
Dental Practice Insider. Applies to solo general practice, private sale. 2026.
3.5x to 5.5x EBITDA
Dental Practice Insider. Applies to group acquisitions, measured after a replacement dentist is paid. 2026.
3x to 5x EBITDA
Dental Pitch Brokerage. Applies to practices under $1M in revenue. published 30 April 2026.
1.60x to 3.37x owner earnings, the middle half of recorded sales
BizBuySell. Applies to dental practices reported sold on BizBuySell, 2021 through 2025. data through 2025.
Verelume does not average these publishers or choose between them. Where they disagree, the disagreement is the finding.
What diligence concentrates on here
- Collections reconciled against production, by provider
- Insurance participation and the durability of the plan mix
- Active patient definition and hygiene recall performance
- Associate agreements, non-compete and non-solicit terms
- Premises lease term and assignment on a change of control
- Owner production as a share of the whole
What Verelume does not do
Verelume does not provide clinical, dental, tax, or legal advice, and does not value a practice. It helps your team find and understand what your own records say, with the sources attached, and flags where documents conflict or where a claim has no documentation behind it.
Related use cases
See what your dental practice's record can answer.
Start with a founder-led Diligence Readiness Assessment, Founding price $5,500, with the Verelume platform included. See all three ways to engage.