General dental practice: chairs, collections and opening decisions
Illustrative case · Owner-dentist, three-room general practice in leased second-generation dental premises; preventive care, fillings and outsourced-lab crowns; no specialist surgery or sedation · United States; California regulatory case; no specific city or site assumed
Explore this business · Overview
A small general dental practice earns from completed treatment and preventive-care appointments, but its lender-facing cash forecast must use contractual fees and payment timing. Our educational California case has three rooms, one owner-dentist and one employed hygienist. Planned startup funding is $680,200, including $220,000 of opening cash. The base case still runs short of cash in month 8 and requires $136,687 more funding across 60 months. These are modeled outcomes, not a market quotation or proof of patient demand.
Observed SBA industry evidence
Lending activity in the broader category
Broad NAICS 621210 offices of dentists; includes specialists, other sites and transactions. Not exact-format lending or local demand.
These are positive-amount loan records selected by approval fiscal year and PIF, CHGOFF or EXEMPT status at the stated snapshot. They are not unique firms, search volumes, approval probabilities or loans disbursed during that year.
Read this industry’s amounts, terms, lenders and outcomes.
Source: SBA 7(a) and 504 FOIA files, snapshot 30 June 2026. Recomputed from original records on 1 October 2026. FY2025 is the most recent complete fiscal year in these files. Definitions and exclusions.
Choose the clinical and payer scope before choosing chairs
The owner performs ordinary examinations, restorations and outsourced-laboratory crowns; the hygienist provides a preventive-care bundle. Crowns include both preparation and seating visits in one completed episode. Specialist surgery, implants, sedation, onsite milling, orthodontic capitation and specialist staffing are excluded. Referrals earn no assumed fee. Commercial PPO and fee-for-service patients are the only payer classes; Medicaid participation and government reimbursement are not silently borrowed into the fee schedule.
California is the disclosed regulatory jurisdiction, without an invented city, lease or patient population. A real project must verify the dentist, hygienist and assisting staff license categories and lawful duties, business ownership/name requirements, site approvals and insurance. The Dental Board and Dental Hygiene Board govern different roles; buying a chair does not create permission to treat patients. Current law directory; Dental Board scope; Hygiene role scope.
Three rooms support a workflow, not three dentists
Two rooms support the owner’s treatment flow and one supports hygiene. Only one dentist’s clinical hours earn the owner-treatment fees. Hygiene checks consume part of those same hours; this case allocates a short check to every hygiene episode without billing a second exam. At base mature bookings, month 12 uses 108.4 owner hours including 11.5 hygiene-check hours. A fourth equipped room adds investment but creates no additional clinician or patient demand.
The opening team includes two paid assistants and one front-desk employee. Payroll pays setup, sterilization, documentation, claims and closing work as well as treatment. Instrument reprocessing and dental-unit maintenance require their own procedures and trained responsibility, so spare room time cannot simply be sold as treatment time. Reprocessing workflow; Dental equipment maintenance.
Read the result before adopting the opening budget
Year 1 base collectible revenue is $659,823, while bank collections are $626,794. EBITDA after gross owner pay and payroll loading is −$127,512. The opening reserve does not convert that loss into profit. Base Year 5 still has negative cash after debt of −$38,058 because wages and other commitments rise faster than collected fees. No project or equity recovery occurs within 60 months.
The higher case keeps the same paid team and physical rooms but changes bookings, attendance, payer mix, fee realization and collections. Its first-year result is stronger, yet its higher-case recovery is conditional on unverified operating hypotheses. Before signing a lease, establish an actual patient-acquisition/recall plan, procedure timings and executed payer terms. Do not replace those observations with a count of empty chairs.
SBA activity describes the broad industry
The verified NAICS 621210 pool includes 1,899 disbursed-status loan records in approval FY2023–FY2025: 517, 671 and 711 respectively, at the June 30, 2026 extract. It covers general and specialist offices and different transactions. It does not identify exact three-room startups, unique borrowers, patient demand or approval odds. Official data boundary; Industry definition.
Read the dedicated SBA industry profile for the broader category’s defined samples and downloadable aggregates. Use the existing SBA explorer for the public methodology. Choose the startup-cost guide to price installed scope; use unit economics to audit appointment contribution; read profitability for the monthly cash failure; then assemble a financing request. This edition has five guides. The full owner-generated plan remains pending.
Explore this business
This edition contains five planning guides. A full business-plan example for this format is not yet published.
Sources and scope
- Dental Board of California: current law directory · Checked 2026-10-05 · Current official directory links Dental Practice Act and Title 16 Division 10 regulations and 2026 edition. Jurisdiction gate, not complete legal compliance review or licensed capacity.
- Dental Board of California: regulator and role scope · Checked 2026-10-05 · Board licenses dentists, RDAs/RDAEFs, defines unlicensed assisting duties and issues anesthesia/sedation permits. Case assumes a licensed owner and appropriately qualified assistants; no sedation or extended duty revenue modeled.
- Illustrative planning-case methodology · Checked 2026-10-05 · Case inputs are hypotheses, not national dental averages, patient demand, hiring quotes or signed commercial terms.
- CDC dental instrument reprocessing and surface disinfection · Checked 2026-10-05 · 2024-05-15 guidance: trained reprocessing responsibility, manufacturer instructions, monitoring and records. Supports workflow scope; not a California regulation substitute or cycle-throughput claim.
- CDC dental-unit water quality · Checked 2026-10-05 · 2024-05-15 guidance supports treatment/testing according to manufacturer instructions. Model maintenance budget is not a price or certification.
- Census industry profile: NAICS 621210 Offices of Dentists · Checked 2026-10-05 · Inspected official definition: independent general or specialized dentistry/dental surgery. Does not isolate this leased three-room format. The NAICS search endpoint returned the general landing page, so the definition is sourced to the Census profile instead.
- Dental Hygiene Board of California: applicants and licensed duties · Checked 2026-10-05 · Official current applicant guidance: license category, permitted duties, required supervision and setting are defined by law. An employed RDH in a dentist-owned practice is the case; not an independent RDHAP business.
- SBA 7(a)/504 FOIA dataset, 2026-06-30 extract · Checked 2026-10-05 · Existing project hash-bound aggregates reused read-only. Approval FY2023–FY2025, PIF/CHGOFF/EXEMPT. 621210 is broad; counts are records, not borrowers, demand or approval odds.