Topic · Research area
Workforce
Dentist supply, retirement projections, hygienist availability, gender and demographic shifts, career-span trends, and the workforce inputs that shape the next decade of practice economics.
Methodology approach
ADA HPI U.S. Dentist Workforce updates and ADA News demographic reporting form the primary input series. Career-span and retirement-age figures are reported with the source-year and methodology disclosed.
Publications on this topic
Baseline Report · April 26, 2026
The State of Dental Practice Values: 2026 Baseline Report
Synthesis of publicly available data from ADA HPI, FOCUS Investment Banking, TUSK Practice Sales, and continuous monitoring of 100+ online dental industry sources establishing baseline benchmarks for dental practice valuations in 2026: ownership trends, the retirement wave, DSO consolidation, and what separates premium from discounted transitions.
Baseline Report · May 15, 2026
The State of Private Practice 2026
Inaugural baseline characterizing the U.S. dental private-practice sector for 2026, anchored on seventeen federal, state, public-company, and academic data sources. Quantifies the retirement wave (41,749 dentists hold an active NPI but no longer practice per HRSA AHRF cross-validated with ACS PUMS 2023), the financing concentration in the SBA-guaranteed share (Live Oak 31.6 percent of dental dollar volume FY2020 to partial-FY2026), and DSO consolidation pressure honestly scoped against the peer-reviewed Nasseh evidence (PE-affiliated practices 1.6 percent in 2015 to 3.0 percent in 2021). Includes a structured 78-event dental-platform transaction tracker built by Private Practice Research and the SEC-disclosed economics of Dentalcorp Holdings as a public-comp anchor.