Identifying Habits of Successful Dental Practices | Negotiating a Dental Practice Purchase

A two-fer! In this blog post, I give some advice to dentists who will become business owners after buying a practice. What are the habits you can cultivate to help your business stay on track?

And in the video (click through to watch), I tackle a related topic. If you’re looking at a dental practice to buy, there are plenty of numbers and hard data to look at to assess the health of the practice. But outside of the quantitative data, what about the qualitative aspects? What should you be looking at to judge whether a practice is the right one for you to buy? I’ve got three business habits that a practice should exhibit to let you know it’s worth your consideration.

Should Dentists Buy the Building with the Practice? | Negotiating a Dental Practice Purchase

You’re usually not benefitting as much financially by purchasing the facility as you think you are. Most lease versus buy analysis come out pretty close. That being said, you are buying control over your space AND you’re buying a forced savings plan in real estate investment. Read on for more details.

Facility Costs for Dental Practices – How Much SHOULD You Pay? | Evaluating a Dental Practice to Buy

Facility costs should account for 5-10% of practice collections, whether you’re renting the facility or purchasing it. This expense is very geographically specific so there is no exact benchmark price you should pay for a facility. But 5-10% is a good range to start with.

2 Ways OVERHEAD Affects Dental Practice Value | Evaluating a Dental Practice to Buy

A: Overhead determines profitability and profitability determines value. (See the video for reason #2.) In conjunction with office collections, overhead is the most important value in practice management.

The relationship between overhead and collections can be like a healthy marriage; they both have to be stable and complimentary to make the marriage (or practice) work.

What is the most important quality to look at when buying a dental practice? | Finding a Dental Practice to Buy

The most important quality to look at when buying a practice is one with strong office collections. 

As a general rule of thumb, I strongly encourage you to ignore any practice that is not collecting at least $750,000, preferably $800,000+.

Why is that? Read on to find out. (More detail in the video after the jump.)

Should I buy a dental practice or begin a startup? | Evaluating a Dental Practice to Buy

For the vast majority of dentists purchasing an existing practice is easier, faster, less risky, and at least as rewarding as going the startup route.

Now, my purpose here is not to completely poo-poo the idea of startup practices. Sometimes doing a startup is a great option. But there are three very common myths circulating about the [false] “cons” of buying an existing office. I want to dispel these myths and break them down for you based on my years of experience.