Choose a practice path

Start with what ownership must protect—not with the transaction someone has available.

If you do not yet know who represents whom, how the participants are paid, or what a listing can and cannot prove, begin with the ownership system. Then compare every credible path using the same patient-centered, financial, household, and downside rules.

Learn the ownership system Compare all six paths

Use this ifYou are deciding whether to remain employed, build, buy, modernize, use staged succession, affiliate, or walk away.

DecisionChoose the path that can meet your clinical values, household needs, capital limits, management tolerance, and patient-access goals.

Evidence neededUse current direct records and independent review. Do not let a listing, loan approval, multiple, or market ratio become the decision.

Work productA defined work product, downside case, unresolved evidence list, and the fact that would reverse the path.

Method, stop-and-verify condition, and required review

Method: Literacy before calculation; owner before transaction; market before target; transferability before price; separate safety checks before scores.

Stop and verify: If ethics, authority, records, market, reserve, household safety, control, or exit fails, a favorable weighted score cannot clear it.

Human review: Owner dentist plus the relevant dental CPA, attorney, lender, clinical reviewer, benefits specialist, operator, technology reviewer, or workforce adviser.

Last reviewed: July 24, 2026

Six paths

Use the next decision—not the whole website.

Each path ends with a readable result and the next document, report, or professional review you need.

Remain employed—for now

Question: Can employment provide ethical autonomy, sustainable income, benefits, mentorship, and flexibility while you improve your ownership position?
Bring: Employment terms, compensation definitions, benefits, schedule, clinical decision rights, restrictions, mentorship, household plan, and ownership milestones.
Leave with: Employment-versus-ownership baseline and a dated re-evaluation plan.

Open this path

Build a startup

Question: Can a patient-centered practice reach durable cash flow before practice and household reserves fail?
Bring: Local capacity, practice model, facility program, site and lease, total project capital, working capital, payer timing, staffing, and execution path.
Leave with: Market file, entry-mode record, 48-month runway, and opening gates.

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Buy an existing practice

Question: Which patients, procedures, payers, people, systems, and cash will remain after the seller leaves?
Bring: Financial controls, patient cohorts, procedure mix, payer contracts and EOBs, team, lease, equipment, liabilities, transition, and buyer clinical mandate.
Leave with: Five-bridge transfer record, downside affordability ceiling, and price bridge.

Open this path

Buy and modernize

Question: Can the purchase, catch-up capital, technology conversion, workflow change, and patient transition be funded and sequenced as one project?
Bring: Acquisition records plus deferred maintenance, conversion scope, training, downtime, data migration, capital timing, and first-100-day dependencies.
Leave with: Combined acquisition-and-modernization capital and transition plan.

Open this path

Use staged succession

Question: Can both dentists test philosophy, patients, operations, control, and financing before a full transfer?
Bring: Roles, decision rights, patient and team communication, buy-in milestones, price method, employment economics, financing, failure, and exit.
Leave with: Milestone-based succession record with reversible gates.

Open this path

Affiliate or join a group

Question: Does the whole post-close life justify the headline price, management structure, employment, restrictions, and contingent value?
Bring: Cash at close, fees, employment, compensation, autonomy, services, holdback, earnout, equity, tax, restrictions, termination, and exit.
Leave with: Whole-period private/DSO/hold comparison and decision-rights matrix.

Open this path

Three questions before any path

Who benefits? What transfers? Who bears the downside?

Who benefits?

Identify client, payer, compensation trigger, referral value, ownership, data flow, and desired closing event.

What transfers?

Separate historical performance from the patients, procedures, payers, team, systems, site, and relationships this dentist can retain.

Who bears the downside?

Put debt, guarantees, reserve, owner labor, clinical pressure, family load, patient continuity, and exit restrictions on the same page.

Do not answer those questions six different ways.

The common comparison turns the owner mandate into shared assumptions and separate safety checks.

Build the common comparison

Data boundary

Public tools are for de-identified, permitted inputs.

Do not enter patient information, passwords, credentials, private employee information, payer contracts, fee schedules, confidential quotes, or unredacted deal documents. Calculators operate in the browser and do not require an account. Some tools can save an editable DenQAI project file on your own device.

Read data handling Use the Local Project File Understand the saveable project file