[reneherse]

My guess is the dental practice was owned by a private equity firm and the young docs were "just following orders".

Highly capitalized, expensive leasehold improvements plus obscure pricing and surprise charges seem to be the typical playbook of that business model.

Reliable doctor-owned dental practices seem to be increasingly hard to find, at least here in the urban Southeastern US

[daveguy]

My dentist was bought out by one of these operations a couple of years ago, and quit after a few months of observing their tactics. I never actually saw her when I went for two 6 months checkups. It was non-stop upsell on water piks, "preventative" procedures, cosmetics. So I switched back when I found out my original dentist had re-opened a private practice. Stay away from venture capital dentistry operations. Same with veterinary practices -- similar issue with venture capital takeover of our long term vet.

If the operation is owned/financed by venture capital, stay away. Their priority is obviously not health and wellbeing.

[racnid]

The option these days for Vets is sell to PE, shut down, or try to find a younger DVM who wants to take over the practice and work in for a couple of years. But the younger DVMs have debt to pay and need to take the PE job. There's little love for the PE route but it gives an exit to older vets I suppose. I doubt many like watching their life's work being hollowed out and worn as a skin suit.

[cftm]

And the money is actually from the Insurance industry, whose goal is to drive down utilization while driving up fee-for-service. This way, they make a little money on non-insured procedures but make a shit load of money by keeping more of the insurance premium. It's messed up... (I work in the dental industry, and see practices getting bought by DSO's, PEs and VCs only to go from $1M / chair / year to 50k / chair / year. all the time).

[dannyobrien]

wait, aren't venture capital and private equity different?

Why would a venture capitalist take over a dentistry or veterinary practice? (Unless it was a growth play, like One Medical)

[dehrmann]

VC is a type of PE that focuses on younger growth companies.

[r00fus]

Private Equity taking over all businesses is going to be our undoing.

[DowagerDave]

Having been through more "classic" VC a couple of times and now PE as well I agree. PE is so much more nefarious and damaging. When you take 100+ M of VC gasoline and pour it on the fire everyone can see what's happening. PE funds want juicy annual returns of free cash and a multiplier sell out; it puts revenue pressure and forces cost control that destroys successful businesses in one funding cycle that might have been doing just find for decades. And nobody but the C-suite and investors gets rich.

[dnissley]

Pensioners gotta get paid somehow

[r00fus]

That's a wild take. Hedge funds and PE have corrupted and taken over said pension funds then pushing funds into these usurious ventures by claiming that the pension fund "needs to keep up with the market" is another huge sign of decay.

[dnissley]

Sure, this was kind of a tongue in cheek comment. But the door is open to these types of investments to the degree that state pensions are underfunded. And PE is only finishing the job of corruption started by the politicians who underfunded these liabilities for decades.

[DowagerDave]

look at what's happened/happening with Red Lobster. They had lots of loser locations, but now the winners are losers too.

[Loudergood]

Can confirm, I used to have a lot of dental IT clients and most of them have left because of being purchased by PE that has their own IT staff and only wants break/fix support.

[loandbehold]

How do you know if dental practice is owned by PE?

[DowagerDave]

sounds like every Vet practice as well. There's lots of things wrong with Canada's public health care system, but the downsides we see with private dental and vet care should be alarming as well.