The Business Side of Comfort Dental
When most people think about a dental practice, they picture a clinical setting, a waiting room with magazines, and a doctor in scrubs. What they probably don’t picture is a finely tuned business model designed to make that doctor financially successful while keeping patient costs low. But that’s exactly what Comfort Dental has built over more than three decades, and it’s the lens through which Dr. Mike Bloss, one of the organization’s founding dentists, has always understood it.
“Comfort Dental is a business that happens to do dentistry,” Dr. Bloss says plainly, “because we do run it from a business standpoint.” It’s a distinction that might sound counterintuitive at first, but for dental professionals exploring their options, it’s one of the most clarifying things you can hear.
Business Fundamentals Aren’t Optional
Dr. Bloss learned this lesson early. Before joining Comfort Dental in 1991, he was working in a high-end, high-overhead practice in Colorado Springs. When he attended a meeting hosted by Comfort Dental founder Dr. Rick Kushner, the pitch was simple and immediately compelling: lower overhead, slightly higher volume, and a focus on treating patients who actually need care. “It just made sense to me,” Dr. Bloss recalls. “So I said, sign me on.”
What Kushner had recognized, and what Bloss came to deeply appreciate, is that clinical excellence alone doesn’t sustain a practice. “If you’re not a good businessman,” Dr. Bloss says, “if you can’t do your payroll, if you can’t meet your bills, you can’t practice.” The Comfort Dental model was engineered to solve that problem structurally, not just philosophically.
The Overhead Equation Changes Everything
The financial architecture of Comfort Dental is built around a single powerful principle: lower overhead creates more freedom, not less. When a practice is running lean, doctors have flexibility that high-overhead practices simply can’t offer. Dr. Bloss describes a patient consultation where the treatment copay came out to $500. The patient said he only had $200 that day. Dr. Bloss’s response: “Did I say 500? I meant to say 200.” He could make that call because the model gave him the margin to do so.
That kind of flexibility isn’t incidental. It’s a direct result of Comfort Dental’s approach to facilities, supplies, staffing, and patient volume. The organization runs its own lab, negotiates supplies at scale across more than 150 locations, and keeps offices open 66 hours a week, maximizing the return on every square foot. “You have to take home 50 cents on the dollar or you can take home 25 cents on the dollar,” Dr. Bloss says. “It’s your decision on how you practice.”
What the DSO Model Gets Wrong
Much of the dental industry has moved toward DSO structures that promise to handle the business side so doctors can focus solely on clinical work. Dr. Bloss sees the appeal but argues the trade-off is costly. “What DSOs sell is, we’re gonna handle all the business stuff for you. You just go do the dentistry,” he explains. “That’s fine, except they take such a huge chunk to handle that business.”
Comfort Dental’s franchise model is structured differently. Dentists are owners, not employees. They have absolute clinical autonomy, and the business infrastructure is designed to support their profitability rather than extract from it. “If you have a model like ours that allows the dentist to be the manager and still do the dentistry, it just works better,” Dr. Bloss says. It does require more engagement from the doctor. You can’t simply clock out. But the payoff, financially and professionally, reflects that ownership.
A Win-Win That’s Actually Rare
What makes the Comfort Dental model genuinely unusual, Dr. Bloss argues, is that it benefits both the doctor and the patient at the same time. Lower overhead means the practice can charge less than a typical private office, which brings in more patients, which sustains the volume that keeps overhead low. It’s a self-reinforcing cycle that most dental business models haven’t figured out how to replicate. “The patients benefited because it’s a lower price to them,” Dr. Bloss says, “and the dentist benefited because he’s getting to take more money home. Just a win-win for both, which is unusual.”
For dental professionals who are weighing their options, whether fresh out of school or years into practice, that combination is worth taking seriously.
Join a Model Built for Dentists Who Want to Own Their Success
If you’re ready to explore what the Comfort Dental franchise model could look like for your career, reach out to Dr. Bloss or learn more about joining the organization.