![](http://www.groupdentistrynow.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/728x90_Quantium-1.jpg")
Sponsored Content
Answer: When your practice is growing, not shrinking!
Written by Chip Fichtner, Co-Founder of Large Practice Sales
While dentists are primarily driven by a desire to provide great care to patients, ultimately there is also a personal goal to achieve income and financial security. With the potential onset of a recession and declining practice collections, doctors should understand the value of their practice today as it could be impacted dramatically in 2026 and beyond.
Smart investors buy dips and sell into rallies. LPS achieved record values for many clients in over $130 million of Invisible Dental Support Organization (IDSO) partnerships completed in Q3 2025. Now is the time, not later, to understand the option to monetize a part of your life’s work at high values. They may not last.
Traditionally, dental practice owners would sell their practice to an associate or another doctor at some percentage of collections as they transitioned to retirement. While still the dominant method for doctors with smaller practices, larger practice owners have other options to achieve far higher values, which every smart doctor should understand.
Growing practices with at least $1.5 million in collections may have the option to sell a part of their practice to a silent IDSO partner at a record value. Doctors continue to lead their practice as an owner with their team, brand, strategy and full autonomy. In 2025, thousands of doctors, both GP and all specialists, will quietly partner with an IDSO. Doctors will achieve values 2x and 3x more than in a typical doctor-to-doctor transition near the end of their careers.
IDSOs have quietly grown across the US for over 35 years. Today there are over 1000 IDSOs eager to partner with doctors who may have a five, ten, twenty or even thirty plus year time horizon of continuing to lead their practices. Many IDSOs have probably contacted you directly if you have a larger practice.
The IDSOs range in size from ten to over 800 practice partners and they operate in all 50 states. You have not heard of most of them as they become a doctor’s silent partner by purchasing 51% to 80% of a practice for cash up front, with the doctor retaining ownership in the balance. IDSO practice partners do not change the practice brand or team members. Your community does not know that you have monetized a part of your life’s work and can now access the resources of a powerful, silent partner to improve patient care and practice profitability.
The benefits of IDSO partnership will vary depending upon the partner you choose. And you must choose wisely as many IDSOs will not succeed as spectacularly as they promise.
In most cases an IDSO will reduce a doctor’s admin burden by taking over banking, accounting, payroll, benefits administration, compliance, credentialling, tax, legal, IT support and vendor and payer negotiations. IDSO practice partners are paying 25% less for supplies, 50% less for implants, and 10% less for better team benefits, technology and equipment than independent dentists.
More impactful is that many IDSO partner practices are reimbursed by payers at higher rates than independent dentists. They may also have dozens of marketing experts driving new patients to their partner practices and in-house recruiting teams helping owner doctors hire the best team members ranging from front desk to associates.
IDSOs enable their practice partners to grow faster and operate more profitably. But the right ones do NOT attempt to homogenize or micromanage your practice. Doctors who choose a great IDSO partner will have full autonomy to operate their practice, not just clinical autonomy!
The values achieved by qualified doctors in an IDSO partnership can far exceed a “transition” to another doctor or a 100% practice sale to a traditional DSO. These transactions often result in values of 60% to 100% of annual collections. In an IDSO partnership, values regularly achieve 200+% of collections; 2x and 3x more than a 100% sale. But there is a catch…
First, a practice must have at least $500,000 in annual EBITDA, or operating profit, to qualify for a high value IDSO partnership. Doctors will also commit to lead their practice for at least three years and preferably five or more. IDSO partnership is not a short-term exit, but rather a long term, wealth building partnership. Remember, doctors are still owners in an IDSO partnership and can see their retained ownership value increase dramatically if they choose the right IDSO partner.
The Biggest Risk to Practice Values
Today, the highest risk to value is practice growth rate and profitability. Practices with shrinking collections will not achieve high values in an IDSO partnership and many will be ineligible for IDSO partnership at any value. The time to monetize a part of your life’s work is when you are growing, not when collections flatten or decline.
Doctors should understand today’s macroeconomic climate. If your practice is growing, you can pocket millions of dollars at low tax rates, securing your financial future today. However, if the inevitable U.S. recession arrives, or practice collections decline for whatever reason, doctors may have to wait years to return to growth and a high practice value.
The growth risk is compounded for 55+ year old doctors. In the over billion dollars of IDSO partnerships created for LPS clients in the last 30 months, over $150 million have been for doctors under 45. Age impacts practice values. Younger is better.
Younger doctors eager for growth are excited to access an IDSO partner’s capital and resources to accelerate their expansion vision. The ownership retained by a doctor in an IDSO partnership can be a very lucrative, generational wealth building opportunity, if a doctor chooses their IDSO partner wisely.
The other issue to consider in timing an IDSO partnership is the number of qualified IDSO bidders for your practice. Over $5.0 billion dollars has been invested in IDSOs in the last 12 months. Growing practices with younger doctors are attracting a record number of qualified bidders in an LPS advised process today. More bidders create not just a higher initial practice value but also provides doctors with more options from which to choose the best IDSO partner.
Doctors who are contacted directly by IDSOs and attempt to negotiate a partnership without considering five or more qualified bidders ultimately do not achieve the highest values. They may also choose the wrong IDSO. Over 900 IDSOs are on the LPS Blacklist, and are not allowed to bid on clients.
Every doctor is invited to contact LPS to schedule a confidential discussion with me to learn more about IDSO partnership and the potential value of their practice today. No obligation education. We can even discuss the IDSO’s already in your area.
Contact LPS by calling 954-300-2644, texting 972-914-7705, visit www.LargePracticeSales.com or email me personally at Chip@LargePracticeSales.com
Watch Chip on the GDN Podcast:
Attributes of the Most Valuable Dental Practices & Dental Groups in 2025 [Webinar Recording]:
Read more about LPS:
- The Fear and Concerns About IDSO Partnership – Group Dentistry Now
- Why Understand Invisible Dental Support Organization (IDSO) Partnership – Group Dentistry Now
