When a dental practice changes ownership, the impact extends beyond the business itself. It can reshape how dentists work, how decisions are made, and how patient care is delivered.
After 21 years as a dental associate in practices across the East Coast and the Midwest, I experienced this firsthand. The last practice I worked in was sold to a corporate entity, an experience that ultimately pushed me to become a practice owner myself. That experience is not unique.
In the third quarter of 2026 alone, dentistry saw 51 transactions, accounting for 49 percent of all physician medical group mergers and acquisitions, according to data by Levin Associates, a Senior Care and Healthcare M&A insights firm.
The American Dental Association's Health Policy Institute reports that 16 percent of U.S. dentists were affiliated with a dental support organization in 2024. A separate study found private equity affiliation roughly doubled from 6.6 percent in 2015 to 12.8 percent in 2021.
The cumulative share is not yet a majority. But the trend is unmistakable, and the question patients should be asking is the same: Who owns the office they walk into, and does it change the care they receive? I believe it often does, and not for the better.
Corporate Ownership
When a corporate entity owns a practice, the financial priorities of the investor sit somewhere above the clinical judgment of the dentist. That is not a conspiracy. It is a structural reality. Investors expect returns. Returns come from procedures, volume, and efficiency. A dentist employed by that structure may find their treatment recommendations scrutinized against a financial target rather than a clinical one.
The dentists I know who work in corporate settings describe low morale and high turnover. The clinicians leave, and the patients feel it. They see a different face every visit. They hear a treatment plan that feels more expensive than the last one. They begin to wonder whether the recommendation is about their teeth or about the bottom line.
Some of them start seeking second opinions from independent dentists, which is how I now meet many of my new patients.
The insurance side compounds the problem. The ADA reports reports that about 23 percent of dentists have dropped out of insurance networks so far in 2026, and that reimbursement rates are lagging behind inflation.
In another report, ADA data showed that reimbursement rate index rose 19 percent since January 2021, while inflation rose 27 percent over the same period. In my experience, rates from some major insurers have not moved meaningfully in decades.
When reimbursement stays flat, and overhead rises, the independent practice absorbs the difference or passes it to the patient. Neither is sustainable.
This is where the conversation usually stops. Patients are told to choose a dentist they trust and not worry about the business structure. But the business structure is precisely what determines whether that trust is well placed.
A practice owned by a dentist who lives in the community and answers to their neighbors operates under different incentives than a practice owned by an investment fund that answers to its limited partners. Both can provide good care. Only one is structurally designed to prioritize it.
Patients Deserve Transparency
The solution is not to ban corporate ownership. It is transparency. A patient should be able to find out, easily and before treatment begins, who owns the practice. Several states are already moving in this direction.
The model is straightforward. Ownership disclosure requirements at the point of care, so that a familiar practice name does not conceal a corporate owner. That single change would give patients the information they need to make a genuine choice.
I am not arguing that independent dentistry is automatically better. I am arguing that patients deserve to know the difference. When they do, many of them choose the smaller practice, the familiar face, the dentist who explains the treatment plan and the cost without a quarterly target in the background. That is what we should build.
It is harder than it looks because the economics of independence are punishing and the corporate competition is well capitalized. But it is worth doing, and it is worth protecting.
The future of American dentistry will be decided by who owns the practices and who answers for the care. If patients cannot see who owns the office, how can they know who is responsible when something goes wrong?
Dr. Caroline Kim is a general dentist and owns Kim Dentistry, an independent practice in Lansing, Michigan. All opinions are the author’s own.