Browse by Topic: DSO & M&A · Practice Operations · Hygiene Career Track · Practice Finance · Regulation & Compliance

What Leadership Actually Looks Like in a Dental Practice practice operations staffing & hr Aug 03, 2026

The short answer: leadership in a dental practice is mostly clarity plus consistency. Your team needs to know what winning looks like this week, who owns what, and that the standard applies to you too. Practices with strong cultures aren't the ones with the best mission statement on the wall — they'...

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Why So Many Hygienists Are Leaving Chairside Work — And What They're Doing Instead hygiene staffing & hr Jul 27, 2026

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...

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What Do Hygienists Actually Earn? Traditional, Independent, and Temp Work Compared hygiene staffing & hr Jul 25, 2026

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...

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Dental Staff Compensation Benchmarks 2026: What Hygienists, Assistants, and Front Office Actually Earn staffing & hr Jun 22, 2026

"Are we paying market rate?" is the most frequently asked compensation question in dental practice management — and it's almost never answered with real data.

Most practice owners rely on what their study club says, what a hygienist told them they made at their last job, or a LinkedIn comment from a...

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47% of Dental Assistants Are Thinking About Leaving. Here's What the 2026 Data Actually Says. practice operations staffing & hr Jun 07, 2026

By Dental Strategy Institute | June 2026 | 7-Minute Read


The 2026 Dentalpost Dental Salary Survey found something that should concern every practice owner and DSO operator reading this: dental assistants are the only dental professional group where satisfaction declined across every single measur...

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The Federal Government Just Made It Easier for Your Dental Team to Save for Retirement—and It Costs Your Office Nothing retirement & tax staffing & hr Jun 01, 2026

By Dental Strategy Institute | June 2026 | 7-Minute Read


Most conversations about retirement benefits in dentistry focus on what the practice has to build, fund, and administer. That is the right conversation—and it is one DSI covers extensively. But a new executive order signed on April 30, 2026...

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