My husband Dave handles the financial side of valuation. I spent years in operatories, and I want to talk about the part of a practice’s value you can see long before anyone opens a spreadsheet.
Dave often makes the point that two practices with the same collections can be worth very different amounts. I have walked into enough offices to tell you why, and almost none of it shows up on the production report.
Overhead is the quiet difference
When money comes through the door, the question that decides value is how much of it stays. Two practices can each collect 1.2 million dollars and keep very different amounts, depending on how they are run. Staffing levels, supply and lab discipline, the cost of the space, how tightly the schedule is built. None of that is visible in collections, and all of it shows up in what a buyer will pay.
A hygiene department that carries its weight
This is the part I care most about. A strong hygiene program is one of the clearest signals of a healthy, valuable practice. When recare is systematized, when the schedule stays full, and when periodontal disease is diagnosed and treated rather than watched, hygiene becomes a genuine profit center and a steady source of restorative diagnosis. A practice that leans almost entirely on the owner’s own drilling is a riskier purchase than one where the hygiene engine keeps producing no matter who sits in the doctor’s chair.
A team that stays
Buyers pay close attention to whether the team will still be there after the sale. Long-tenured, cross-trained staff lower the risk of a rocky transition. High turnover, unfilled roles, or a front desk that only one person truly understands all read as risk, and risk pulls the offer down.
What a buyer notices walking in
A buyer forms an impression in the first ten minutes. Is the schedule full or patchy. Are the systems written down or carried in one person’s memory. Does the practice run on documented processes or on the owner’s personal effort. Those impressions are not soft. They translate directly into where an offer lands.
The takeaway
Collections tell you how busy a practice is. They do not tell you how well it runs, and how well it runs is a large part of what it is worth. Most of these are things you can strengthen long before you sell, which means the operational work you do now is also value you are building.
Practice Worth captures these factors and shows you where they land your practice in its value range. If you want to see how it reads a practice like yours, there is a free sample report at getpracticeworth.com.
About the author. Karen L. Eslinger, RDH, is co-owner and CEO of Practice Worth and spent more than twenty years as a registered dental hygienist before co-founding the company in 2026 with her husband, Dr. David Eslinger, DDS, MBA. Practice Worth is a Missouri LLC. Learn more at getpracticeworth.com.
The companion piece on the financial half: why your practice isn’t worth a percentage of your collections.