CDS Midwinter 2027: Feb 25-27, Chicago
The Chicago Dental Society Midwinter Meeting runs February 25-27, 2027 at McCormick Place West in Chicago. Its exhibit floor is where a lot of the year's capital decisions get made. This guide keeps those decisions tied to your production and overhead rather than the sales pitch. Sorso is not an exhibitor, sponsor, or speaker at this event. This is an independent prep guide for dental practice owners.
The CFO read
Midwinter falls just after your books close, which is the best moment in the calendar to make capital decisions: you finally have a full prior year to budget against. Most owners waste that by walking the floor first and building the budget backward from what they liked. Do it the other way. Set the capital budget and the utilization each device has to reach before you get to Chicago, then let the floor compete for it. The dentist who leaves with a scanner she can justify and the one who leaves with a payment he cannot usually walked in with the same excitement and different spreadsheets.
— Stanislav Sukhinin, CFA · Founder, Sorso
Why this matters for your bottom line
Late February lands right after your prior year closes. Walk in with a finished P&L and you can set this year's capital budget against real numbers instead of a guess.
The exhibit floor is enormous, and the scanners, CBCT units, and mills you will be pitched only pay back at a utilization rate you can calculate before you land, not after you sign.
Continuing education here reaches the whole team. The hygiene department's production per hour is usually the fastest margin lever in the practice, and the courses that lift it repay the trip quickly.
Three days in one hall is a chance to pressure-test your PPO write-offs and fee-schedule gap against what other owners in the aisles are actually collecting.
What to look for
Digital equipment demos judged on payback at your case volume, not the show-floor discount
Practice-management and HR courses on associate compensation, scheduling, and retention
Hygiene productivity and recare systems, with the revenue-per-hour math behind them
PPO negotiation and fee-schedule sessions relevant to your top plans
Financing and leasing terms offered on the floor, read for the real cost of capital
Team continuing education that lifts chairside efficiency and case acceptance
Financial prep checklist
Review these before you go.
Close your prior-year books before you go so the capital budget rests on actual numbers
Run production and collections per provider for the trailing twelve months
Break overhead into staff, lab, supplies, occupancy, and admin, and flag the one that grew
Build a standalone hygiene P&L with revenue per hygiene hour
Map your fee-schedule gap: UCR fees against your top three PPO allowables
Set a hard capital budget and the utilization each device has to hit to clear it
Before CDS Midwinter Meeting 2027, get your own numbers straight
Walk in able to check every benchmark on the slides against your own numbers. Three ways owners start with us:
Dental Practice Accounting & CFO
Built for dental & DSO economics
PPO write-offs, provider production, multi-location P&L, and exit prep — done by people who know dental. Accounting from $2,000/mo.
Explore your specialty →Accounting
Healthcare-specialist accounting
Books done right by people who understand clinic finance. Starts at $2,000/mo.
Explore Accounting →Free Assessment
A financial checkup before you go
Four minutes. See where your practice stands so every session is measured against your own numbers.
Take the assessment →Going to CDS Midwinter Meeting 2027?
Tell us, and we will look at coming to meet you.
Stan does not have a ticket booked for this one yet. If enough clinic owners want to sit down there, that is what decides it. Register interest and we will confirm either way well before the dates — no obligation, and we will not add you to a mailing list.
Register interest in meeting →
Founder of Sorso and a CFA charterholder. Before Sorso, Stan spent 19 years in corporate finance at institutions including UniCredit and Société Générale — managing a $450M loan portfolio and making senior partner at a major mezzanine lender by 29 — then built a fractional CFO firm exclusively for outpatient healthcare clinics.