How do I know if my clinic’s numbers are normal?
Compare five numbers against the published range for your specialty: profit margin before owner pay, overhead ratio, net collection rate, denial rate, and days in A/R. Together they describe most of what a lender or a buyer would examine. This tool shows where each of yours sits, and shows the source behind every benchmark, including when that source is us.
Am I normal?
It is the first question almost every clinic owner asks, and the hardest one to answer honestly, because most benchmark numbers circulating online cannot be traced back to anyone who measured them. This tool compares your numbers against a range for your specialty and tells you where each benchmark came from. Where nobody publishes one, it says so instead of inventing authority.
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Profit before any owner or provider compensation, as a share of collections. Overhead and margin add to 100.
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Source: ZenOne
Total operating expenses divided by collections, before owner pay.
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Source: ZenOne
Payments collected as a share of what you were contractually allowed to collect.
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No published source for this metric. Sorso estimate.
Share of claims denied on first submission.
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No published source for this metric. Sorso estimate.
Average days between billing a claim and collecting on it.
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No published source for this metric. Sorso estimate.
Every metric above shows where its number came from, including when the answer is “from us”. Ranges are profit and overhead before owner or provider compensation, so overhead and margin add to 100. Published owner-income figures use a different convention and run lower. Nothing here is a valuation or an audit.
Sources for Dental Practices
- ADA Health Policy Institute — Dental Practice Research: 2025 general-dentist net income $215,320 on average gross billings of $965,660, i.e. 22.3% AFTER owner compensation (both figures fetched and confirmed on the ADA page 2026-08-03). The profit-margin range on this page is measured BEFORE owner pay, which is why it reads higher.
- ZenOne — Dental Practice Overhead Benchmarks: healthy total overhead 55–65% of collections, national median ~62%
Why this tool admits what it doesn’t know
Benchmark content has a quiet problem. A figure gets published somewhere, gets quoted without its source, gets quoted again from the quote, and within a few years it is everywhere and traceable to nothing. Ask where the number for med spa profit margin comes from and you will find articles citing each other in a circle.
We checked. The American Med Spa Association’s State of the Industry report publishes average annual revenue and does not publish a profit margin at all. Several outpatient specialties have no published benchmark ranges from any association. That is a real finding, and hiding it behind a confident-looking number would make this tool worse, not better.
So each metric here carries its provenance. Where the American Dental Association, WebPT, APTA or another body publishes something, it is linked. Where nothing exists, the tool says the range is ours and explains that we drew it from the practices we do the accounting for. You can weigh the two differently, which is the entire point.
One convention worth stating, because getting it wrong is the most common reason an owner concludes their practice is failing when it is not. Margin and overhead here are before owner or provider compensation. Published owner-income figures, such as the ADA’s net income per dentist, are after it, and are therefore much lower. Both are right. Comparing one to the other is not.
Common questions
Am I normal? How do I know if my clinic's numbers are healthy?
Compare each number against the range for your specialty rather than against a single figure. Profit margin, overhead ratio, net collection rate, denial rate and days in A/R together describe most of what a buyer or a lender would look at. Sitting inside every range is reassuring but not conclusive, because the ranges are wide enough to hide a lot.
Why does this tool show a source next to every benchmark?
Because most benchmark calculators do not, and the numbers behind them frequently cannot be traced to anything. Where an association or industry body publishes a figure we link it. Where none exists we say so plainly and label the range as our own estimate. That is a less impressive-looking tool and a more honest one.
Why do some specialties say you have no source?
Because for several outpatient specialties no association or industry body publishes verifiable benchmark ranges at all. Rather than borrow a number from an adjacent specialty and present it as authoritative, the tool states that we have nothing published to point at and shows our own estimate instead.
Is profit margin here before or after paying myself?
Before. These ranges are profit before any owner or provider compensation, which is the convention the overhead ratio beside them assumes — overhead and margin add to 100. Published owner-income figures use the opposite convention and run materially lower. Both are correct; they measure different things, and mixing them is the most common way clinic owners conclude their practice is failing when it is not.
My numbers are all in range. Does that mean everything is fine?
Not necessarily. A range wide enough to cover a specialty nationally is wide enough to cover both a comfortable practice and one quietly losing ground. Being inside the range means you are not an outlier. It does not mean there is nothing to fix, and it says nothing about trend, which usually matters more than level.
Being in range is not the same as being well run
A national range is wide enough to cover a comfortable practice and one quietly losing ground. What it cannot show you is trend, provider-level contribution, or which payer is costing you the most. That is the work.
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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.