Your name stays on the door.
Twelve months minimum after close, and after that only for a reason beyond tidiness. Tandem Dental Studio is the case to check: the name changed, the dentist did not, and the practice said so on its own homepage.
For dentists
Most owners ask about
the team first.So that part goes first.
Selling a practice you built is not a transaction you do twice. The number matters, and it is not usually the thing keeping people awake. What follows is what actually happens, written down before there is any reason to negotiate it.
If you are selling
Four commitments,
made in writing.
The team is not a synergy line.
Retention of the people already there is the first thing measured after close, before production is. Nobody is asked to reapply for the job they already have.
You can stay, in any shape.
Full time, three days, two, or a year of transition and out. Continuity of the treating dentist is worth more to a patient base than any operational change we could make, so we would rather you stayed.
Diligence is run by dentists.
The questions come from people who have worked a schedule and read a daysheet, not from an analyst reading a deck. Expect specific questions, and specific answers back.
How it goes
Six steps, and you can stop
at any one of them.
1
A conversation, not a process
One call. What you have built, what you want next, and whether this is even the right kind of buyer for you. No documents change hands.
2
A mutual confidentiality agreement
Before any numbers move in either direction. Yours are yours, and ours are ours.
3
A look at the practice
Production history, the schedule, the hygiene department, the lease, the equipment. Enough to make an offer that will not need renegotiating later, which is the point.
4
A letter of intent
Price, structure, your role afterwards, and the twelve-month name commitment written into it rather than promised beside it.
5
Diligence and documents
Your advisers and ours. This is the slow part in every practice sale and pretending otherwise helps nobody.
6
Close, then a quiet year
The name, the signage, the phone number and the team stay as they are. What changes first is the back office, because that is the part patients never see.
What happens to the practice
We grow the one we bought,
not the next one.
The growth plan for a practice we buy is that practice. Its unbooked hours, its recall list, the treatment plans sitting unscheduled, and the services its patients currently leave the building for.
None of that requires cutting anything, which is the part that separates this from the version of a sale you have probably been pitched. Cost synergy is somebody else's model. It reads well in a deck and it is felt at the front desk.
- Your team stays, and gets trained wider rather than thinner.
- Recall and reactivation get run properly, often for the first time.
- Cases that used to be referred out can stay inside the group.
- Lab work moves to the group's own 3D Studio, so remakes and turnaround stop being somebody else's schedule.
- Unbooked chair time is the first thing we work on, because it is the growth that costs nothing to acquire.
What we look for
A practice that already works.
The short version
- General practice with an established patient base and a recall system that functions, in British Columbia or nearby.
- A team that has been there a while. High turnover is a signal about the building, not the market.
- An owner who wants the practice to continue rather than be absorbed.
- Enough room, physically, to add a service the market actually supports. Where there is not, we do not pretend there is.
What we are not
- Not a fund. There is no outside capital behind this and no exit clock, which is also why we move at the pace of one practice at a time.
- Not interested in stripping a practice for its chart list.
- Not able to promise a number before seeing the practice. Anyone who does is guessing or will revise it later.
Asked most often
The questions that come up
on the first call.
What happens to my team?
They keep their jobs, their roles and their seniority. Retention is measured after close before production is, because a practice that loses its front desk loses its patients about six months later.
Do I have to keep working?
No, and most owners do for a while anyway. Any shape works: full time, a couple of days, or a defined transition and out. What we would rather avoid is you leaving on the Friday and a locum arriving on the Monday, because the patients notice that more than anything else in the deal.
Will the practice be renamed?
Not for at least twelve months, and after that only if there is a reason beyond tidiness. It is written into the letter of intent rather than promised alongside it. Webster Dental Group does not appear on the signage, the scrubs, the forms or the Google listing at any point.
What actually changes after close?
The back office first, because patients never see it: scheduling, recall, insurance follow-up, reporting, marketing. Then whatever the practice has been asking for and could not fund alone. Clinical decisions do not change, because those are not ours to make.
How long does it take?
From first conversation to close, usually a few months. Diligence and documents are the slow part and they are slow at every buyer. Anyone promising a four-week close is describing a different kind of transaction.
Do you buy outside British Columbia?
The four practices are all in BC today. We will look at anything within reasonable reach of a regional manager, and we will say so plainly if a practice is too far to run to the standard we hold the others to.
I am not selling. I am just curious what it is worth.
That is a normal reason to call and it does not obligate anything. Most owners have that conversation several years before they act on it, which is the right order to do it in.
Not selling
Looking to associate
rather than sell?
Different conversation, different page. Clinical autonomy, how compensation is written, what case mix you can actually get your hands on, and a paid working day before either side commits.
What it looks like in practice
Tandem Dental Studio,
Vernon.
Dr. Mark Wasylyk and Dr. Michael Webster run Tandem together. It is the clearest picture of what joining the group actually looks like: two dentists, both still treating, both named on the door, with the management, marketing and software carried centrally instead of by whoever has the least full column that week.
Start a conversation
One call, and nothing
changes hands.
- Selling or joining a practice
- michael@websterdentalgroup.ca
- Careers
- careers@websterdentalgroup.ca
- Vendors and advisers
- hello@websterdentalgroup.ca
Practice enquiries reach Dr. Webster directly. He is a general dentist and will often be chairside, so a reply may take a day.