Benesch provides individual dentists, dental practices, and Dental Support Organizations (DSOs) with comprehensive guidance in all aspects of the dental industry. Our services include entity formation, dental board matters, buys and sales of dental practices/assets, formation and operation of DSOs, dental lending and investment, scaling dental business operations, payor reimbursement issues, private insurance, as well as fraud and abuse laws. We assist our dental and DSO clients in maximizing value by minimizing disruption, proactively planning, and working with our clients through our broad and intimate understanding of the dental industry, and those industries that impact it.
Why Benesch? We approach dentistry like dentists approach dentistry, through comprehensive preventative practices through the treatment continuum. Comprehensive dentistry is a holistic process with a full suite of services that focuses on your whole wellbeing, including your oral health, as well as general physical and mental health. Our dental professionals, including our attorneys, paralegals, and professional staff do the same. We are committed to you. That is, we provide a wide variety of services to DSOs, individual dental practices, group practices, individual dentists, and other individuals and businesses that service the dental industry. We do that by separating our practice group into three main areas: (i) DSOs; (ii) transactional M&A work; and (iii) everyday legal services necessary to support our dental clients. We then support all three areas by being thought leaders in the dental space in all aspects of what dentistry is and will be.
DSO Practice
Our DSO practice is rooted in a deep understanding and 20+ years of experience representing dentists from the beginning of their careers (employment contracts, office leases, EEOC issues, etc.) throughout their career trajectories including sales of practices to DSOs and DSO roll ups. We have learned alongside our dentist clients, from the beginning of their practice lifecycles through any issues along the way.
In order to truly advocate for DSOs, it is an enormous advantage to understand the profession from the lens of the dentist, from the start of a dental career and associated legal/business issues, through ultimate sale to a DSO.
We have specific experience advising general dentists and specialty DSO practices in the following subspecialties:
We Know the DSO Industry Nationally
Benesch is able to provide dentist/DSO representation in any state. For matters that require specific expertise, we engage and coordinate with local counsel. We have recent experience in the states below:
How We Work with DSOs on Transactions
Benesch’s Dental Industry/DSO attorneys are true thought leaders within the industry
Dentist Incentives
When appropriate to the circumstance, dentists can create structures to provide individual dentists with the opportunity to acquire equity in the enterprise. Some examples include:
DSO Deal Structure
We assist our clients with identifying the most viable deal structures based on appropriate risk tolerance and growth incentives. Generally, DSO acquisitions are done through the acquisition of assets to protect the buyer from legacy liabilities. However, from time to time, stock deals are done when dictated by scale or to preserve tax efficiencies. In some cases, the way a target has been structured may lead to the need to consider a stock transaction and/or a tax-efficient restructuring or reorganization. Regardless of the mechanics of an acquisition, the most likely resulting structures will include some bifurcation of the clinical practice entities and the management entities.
Counseled numerous dentists as they acquire practices and expand their platform.
Counseled 8 unaffiliated dental group in the merger and restructuring into one DSO with over 23 locations.