Spring 2013 - Tufts University School of Dental Medicine

Buoyed by economic and social changes,
group practices pick up steam
strength in
numbers
By Helene Ragovin illustration by Federico Jordan
the neighborhood dental office—
the wood-paneled waiting room stocked
with Highlights magazines and a single
contour chair staffed by a lone dentist—
occupies a corner of most 20th-century
memories.
But that scenario has pretty much
gone the way of the rotary telephone.
One chair has become 10, 15 or even 20,
with the number of dentists practicing as
a group increasing as well. Following a
trend already embraced by other branches
of medicine, the number of large group
practices and multilocation dental-care
chains has been growing at a faster clip
than ever before, and the new model
of dental practice is likely to become as
ingrained in the memories of the next
generation of patients as the one-dentist
show was to the previous one.
“Solo practice is no longer the only
point of entry for a new dentist,” says
Kathleen O’Loughlin, D81, executive
director and chief operating officer
of the American Dental Association
(ADA). While there have always been
groups of anywhere from two to 10 doctors
working together, O’Loughlin says,
“the emerging model is multiple sites,
sometimes in multiple states, all with an
identical management system in place for
economies of scale.
“The solo practice is not going
away—that’s not what the data shows,”
O’Loughlin stresses. “What we’re seeing is
a bifurcated model.”
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