Browse by Topic: DSO & M&A · Practice Operations · Hygiene Career Track · Practice Finance · Regulation & Compliance
By Pete Volk, founder of Dental Strategy Institute, with clinical review by Susan Volk, RDH.
Of all the reasons a hygienist talks herself out of going independent, "the paperwork" is the quietest and the most defeating. Not the clinical part — you've got that. The nagging sense that on your own, yo...
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...
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...
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...
By Pete Volk, founder of Dental Strategy Institute, with clinical review by Susan Volk, RDH.
There's a particular frustration in learning that your career ceiling was set by a state legislature you never voted for. A hygienist in Colorado can build something a hygienist in another state legally can...
By Pete Volk, founder of Dental Strategy Institute, with clinical review by Susan Volk, RDH.
By year six, most hygienists have done a quiet kind of math. Not the paycheck math — the other kind. How many more years your neck and shoulders have in them. How many more identical Tuesdays sit between no...
Twenty-five states have filed some version of a dental loss ratio bill since 2023, by my count. Two of them have actually gotten a mandatory minimum across the finish line. Sit with that gap for a second — that's the whole story of where this fight stands in 2026, more than any single headline could...
If you caught our first post on dental loss ratio, you already know the mechanics — DLR sets a floor on how much of every premium dollar an insurer has to spend on patient care. What that post skipped over is the question every practice owner and DSO operator actually cares about, which is whether a...
Ask ten dentists what "dental loss ratio" means and you'll get eight blank stares, one wild guess about lost patients, and one office manager who read something on the ADA site last month and has been waiting for an excuse to bring it up at lunch. Fair. It's not a phrase that rolls off the tongue in...
Most of what's circulating about Colorado's new dental rules is wrong in one direction or the other. Either someone is calling it a ban on DSOs — it isn't — or someone is waving it off as business as usual. It isn't that either.
Here's what actually happened, what it means for your structure, and wh...
By Dental Strategy Institute | June 2026 | 8-Minute Read
President Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" has received extensive coverage for its immigration and tax provisions. Its impact on dental practices has received comparatively little — which is a problem, because the implications for pract...