Assumptions and methods

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, staffing, and hygiene benchmarks, combined with our own analysis. We buy no proprietary benchmark dataset and pay 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 we use 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 our 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.

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 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. Revenue per staff FTE = collections ÷ total staff FTE.

The remaining two are: production-to-collection ratio = collections ÷ production, where production is net of contractual insurance adjustments — the basis the published 95–98% benchmark is defined on; and hygiene production ratio = hygiene production ÷ total production. Only the cost ratios divide by collections — owner earnings is a dollar amount per owner dentist, and the rest divide by staff FTE or total production, as above.

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

The benchmark ranges

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

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

One is read differently, because there is no favorable direction to move in:

For this one 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.

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. Owner earnings is calibrated to that survey’s reported per-dentist owner net income for general practitioners.

How to read the results

Read them as a map of where to look.