What private equity changes at your dentist

Private equity raises dental procedure prices by about 3%. Wait, only 3%? Then why have requests to cover dentists dominated my comments? It's because what actually changes once private equity takes over dental practices isn't the flat prices, it's that they aggressively push different procedures. And those procedures cost $1000s instead of $100s.

And that increased money doesn't go to the workers, by the way, it gets spent on dental software and medical supplies. And guess who owns those? (Henry Schein, DentalXChange)

Just like with vets, private equity's footprint in dental practice is growing. Private equity dentists nearly doubled from 6.6% in 2015 to 12.8% in 2021. That number might be even bigger now because we don't have numbers for the past 5 years. Nobody knows.

And part of that problem is that when offices get taken over, they keep the same name, so we as patients are none the wiser. That growing transparency problem inspired one dentist to build WhoIsMyDentist.com, where patients can see that ownership information. And awareness is the first step to taking action.