Browse by Topic: DSO & M&A · Practice Operations · Hygiene Career Track · Practice Finance · Regulation & Compliance
By Pete Volk, founder of Dental Strategy Institute.
North Carolina just eliminated its requirement that DSOs get advance approval from the State Board of Dental Examiners before signing a management agreement. Under Session Law 2026-41, enacted July 7, 2026, parties can now execute a management arra...
By Pete Volk, founder of Dental Strategy Institute, with clinical review by Susan Volk, RDH.
If you've caught yourself wondering how many more years your body can do this, you're not being dramatic and you're not alone. The neck, the shoulders, the wrists, the sheer sameness of the schedule — those...
Six percent. Sit with that number for a second. That's how much dental equipment and supply prices climbed in the twelve months ending in February, according to the ADA — against a general inflation rate of roughly 2%. Your input costs are running three times the pace of the broader economy, and nob...
By Pete Volk, founder of Dental Strategy Institute, with clinical review by Susan Volk, RDH.
There's a number you've probably run in your head on the drive home — what this actually adds up to over a career, and whether it ever really changes. Most hygienists never get an honest answer, because the...
A practice owner told me a few months back that she'd raised her hygienist starting wage twice in eighteen months and still couldn't keep a chair filled. Twice. And she still had a waiting list of patients and an empty operatory on Tuesdays. If you've lived any version of that story, the ADA's lates...
Why Dental Transparency Is the Competitive Advantage Practices Are Sleeping On
I want to make an argument that might surprise you coming from someone who has spent 25 years on the supply side of dentistry.
Price transparency is not a threat to dental practices. It is, for the practices willing to ...
A dental lab’s value comes down to seven factors, and revenue is only one of them. Buyers price EBITDA margin, client concentration, owner dependency, digital infrastructure, quality systems, team stability, and market positioning into the multiple they’re willing to pay — and that multiple can swin...
By Pete Volk, founder of Dental Strategy Institute, with clinical review by Susan Volk, RDH.
The gap between "I'm interested in myofunctional therapy" and "I'm actually doing it" is where most people stall. Not because the path is hard, but because it's unmapped — you don't want to sink a few thous...
Twenty-some healthcare attorneys have now written some version of "what Colorado's DSO rules mean for your practice." Almost none of them have stepped back to ask the more useful question: is Colorado actually unusual, or is it just the first state to finish what a lot of other states already starte...
D2740. D4341. D6010.
If you've ever looked at a dental treatment plan or an Explanation of Benefits and wondered what those codes mean, you're not alone. Most patients never learn what they're actually being billed for — and that information gap has a real cost.
Here's a practical guide to the cod...
By Pete Volk, founder of Dental Strategy Institute, with clinical review by Susan Volk, RDH.
Somewhere around the thousandth prophy, a lot of hygienists start to wonder if this is the whole job — the same forty-five minutes, the same room, the same pace, forever. If that wondering has started for y...
Every DSO operator with a Colorado footprint is asking some version of the same question right now: do we pause? Stop signing LOIs, stop closing deals, wait until January 1, 2027 passes and the dust settles?
No. But the reasoning behind that "no" matters more than the answer itself, and it's not the...