Methodology and assumptions

What the analysis is

The firm’s tools, including the Practice Health Benchmark, are educational diagnostics. They compare the figures you enter against general dental-industry benchmark ranges to show where your practice looks strong and where it may bear a closer look.

They are a starting point for a conversation, not a verdict, a valuation, an audit, or individualized advice. A number outside a benchmark range is a prompt to look closer, not a conclusion about your practice.

Where the benchmarks come from

Benchmark ranges are drawn from public dental-industry data: principally the American Dental Association Health Policy Institute’s Survey of Dental Practice (2025 results: income, gross billings, expenses, practice characteristics, and staff wages; a free public release, retrieved August 2026), together with published dental practice-management and dental-CPA literature covering per-category overhead tiers, per-operatory productivity, staffing, and hygiene benchmarks, combined with the firm’s own analysis. The firm buys no proprietary benchmark dataset and pays no vendor for these ranges.

The two kinds of source are read differently. The survey reports what dentists actually told the ADA: its results are statistically weighted, its response counts per table are modest, and its billing figures are gross billings (fees charged) rather than collections, so the firm uses it as a cross-check where its tables measure a quantity comparable to the tool’s. The practice-management literature describes what well-run practices aim for; a range resting on that literature is a reference for comparison, not a measurement of the average practice.

Owner earnings is the range calibrated to that survey. It is what the practice has left after its operating costs and after any associate dentists are paid, divided by the number of owner dentists: an average per owner, and a directional proxy rather than an exact match to what any one owner receives, because the analysis does not model how owners actually divide the money between them. The survey reports the annual net income of general-practitioner owners per dentist, and its middle two quartiles run $137,010 to $295,370 with a median of $199,140; dividing is what puts the two figures on the same footing, and it is why the analysis asks how many owners the practice has. The lower edge, $57,830, is the firm’s own cut rather than a published figure: half an interquartile range below the first quartile, marking owners clearing meaningfully less than the bottom quarter of the survey. One range is the firm’s own working convention, because no published source measures the same quantity: staff per operatory. Published staffing guidance is stated per dentist, not per operatory.

They are directional and are refined over time. Where a source is updated, the ranges are reviewed against it rather than carried forward unchanged.

For specialties (orthodontics, oral surgery, periodontics, endodontics, prosthodontics, and pediatric practices), analyses use general-practice benchmark ranges, and the results disclose that.

The assumptions behind a result

Every result depends on the inputs you provide and on the assumptions built into the calculation.

The same inputs always produce the same result.

The ranges are references for comparison, not standards every practice is expected to meet; where a published performance target is used as the band itself, it is identified as such. Being inside a range is not necessarily good, and being outside one is not necessarily bad. Practice stage, location, payer mix, ownership model, and personal goals all change what a number means.

The calculations

The cost ratios are taken against annual collections, not production, because collections are what the practice actually received. Overhead is the sum of non-dentist staff compensation, facility, lab, dental and office supplies, technology and equipment, marketing, insurance, continuing education, and other operating costs. It excludes every form of dentist pay, owners and associates alike, because the published ranges the cost ratios are compared against are defined that way.

Total overhead ratio = overhead ÷ collections. Staff cost ratio = total staff compensation ÷ collections; the facility, lab, technology, and marketing ratios are each that cost ÷ collections. Supply ratio = dental supplies ÷ collections; office supplies is part of total overhead but not of that ratio, because the published supply range is defined on dental supplies alone. Owner earnings = (collections − overhead − associate dentist pay) ÷ owner dentists, in dollars. Associate pay is deducted here and only here, because an associate is a cost of running the practice while an owner receives what remains; what the owners take is not deducted, because that is the figure being measured. Collections per operatory = collections ÷ operatories. Revenue per staff FTE = collections ÷ total staff FTE.

The remaining three are: production-to-collection ratio = collections ÷ production; hygiene production ratio = hygiene production ÷ total production; and staff per operatory = total staff FTE ÷ operatories. Only the cost ratios divide by collections — owner earnings is a dollar amount per owner dentist, and the rest divide by operatories, staff FTE, or total production, as above.

Figures entered as monthly are annualised by ×12 before any of this runs. Practice debt is a balance and is never converted.

The benchmark ranges

Eleven of the thirteen have a better and a worse direction. For a general practice their ranges are:

Past the range on the favourable side a metric reads as strong; moving the other way it reads as bearing attention, then as concerning.

Two are read differently, because there is no favourable direction to move in:

For these the target itself is the strong result and the reading degrades on BOTH sides: too little hygiene production and too much are each worth looking at, as are too few staff per operatory and too many.

The bands are the same ones printed beside your own figures in the results table.

The ranges are drawn from published dental practice-management literature and checked against the American Dental Association survey named above where its tables measure comparable quantities. Collections per operatory is a published performance target rather than a population average; owner earnings is calibrated to that survey’s reported per-dentist owner net income for general practitioners; staff per operatory is a firm-defined working convention, stated as such here.

Appropriateness

These tools are general and educational. They are intended for dentists and dental practice owners, and they are not tailored to any one person’s full financial situation, timeline, or goals.

A result is not a recommendation to take or avoid any action, and it is not a substitute for a complete analysis or for professional tax, legal, or accounting advice.

Limitations

A diagnostic is a snapshot. It reflects a single point in time; it cannot see everything that shapes a practice’s economics.

Benchmarks are directional references, not guarantees. Industry data carries lag and variance, and your circumstances may differ materially from any benchmark.

Nothing here predicts or guarantees any future outcome.

How to read the results

Read them as a map of where to look.