Competition among DSOs interested in buying your practice and brokers hoping to represent you is fiercer than ever. Doctors are being bombarded with a barrage of marketing information, disguised as educational material, in every possible format, from articles to webinars and seminars.

And some major dental publications are now pay-for-play, designed to cash-in on the millions of advertising dollars being spent by DSOs and brokers, whose sole message is to sell now or suffer draconian consequences. They compare the future dental practice landscape to the apocalypse and warn of certain death if you don’t sell to a DSO now. Believe it or not, these are actual headlines!

The latest warnings are the direst ever, comparing dentistry’s future to what’s happened in medicine. We disagree.

Most of the factors that led to the consolidation of medical practices simply don’t apply to dentistry. Dental spending represents only about 4% of the total U.S. healthcare spending, so it receives much less pressure from government and insurance company regulation. Moreover, while over 90% of