What is changing in your market right now?

Independent dental practices face steady demand growth alongside an ownership shift toward larger groups backed by outside investors.

What is changing

Large dental groups backed by outside investors keep buying up individual practices, with about 16 percent of U.S. dentists now affiliated with one of these organizations as of 2024, more than double the share in 2015¹. In the Twin Cities area, Park Dental Partners added a practice in Mendota, Minnesota in March 2026 and completed its 47th Twin Cities practice acquisition in Bloomington at the end of 2025, while Heartland Dental opened a new location in Minnesota the same month²³.

In ZIP code 55344, which covers Eden Prairie, Minnesota, at least 10 dental practices are listed on Opencare, including both independent offices and group owned locations⁴. Nationally, the dental services market was estimated at approximately 185 billion dollars in 2026, covering revenue across general and specialty dental practice locations⁵.

Younger dentists are affiliating with these groups at much higher rates, with more than 1 in 4 dentists less than 10 years out of school affiliated with one in 2024, compared to about 9 percent of those who graduated more than 25 years ago⁶.

Dental care in this market splits into two ownership types: practices still owned by the dentist who runs them, and practices owned by a larger group that bought out the original dentist. These two types often compete for the same patients in the same neighborhood, but they answer to different pressures, since a group-owned office typically has a corporate office setting its hours, pricing, and marketing, while an independent office sets its own on a dentist's own judgment.

At least 10 dental offices serve the Eden Prairie ZIP code today, a mix of independent and group-owned practices, so a patient comparing dentists nearby is often choosing between these two kinds of ownership without realizing it⁴.