From a recent paper by Nasseh et al. 2026 in Health Services Research:
Following acquisition, private equity-owned dental offices increased charges for dental care services by 3.3% (95% CI: 2.3%–4.4%), although allowed prices for these services remained statistically unchanged. Dental offices acquired by private equity firms tended to shift from diagnostic and preventive procedures to generally higher reimbursement restorative, specialty, and surgical procedures. Dental offices were more likely to become multispecialty practices after being acquired by a private equity firm.
The authors used data on private equity transactions, data on practices from the American Dental Association dental office database, and information on price and utilization from commercial dental insurance data. You can read the full paper here.
