Standardizing a multi-location dental or orthodontic group takes an operations firm that maps how each site actually runs, then builds one standard with a named owner and a weekly number behind it. GME Dental Professional Services does this work for groups from 2 locations through 50, starting with a diagnostic and ending with your team running the system.
A platform buys 30 offices in 4 years. Each one arrives with its own scheduling logic, hygiene protocols, billers, and way of confirming appointments. The deal model assumed those would converge. Nobody was assigned to converge them.
Same-store growth is where it shows. Acquisition keeps adding doctors and covers the gap, right up until the cover runs out. The margin is made on the floor, one location at a time, by people who know who owns the aging report and who owns the exam that never got rebooked.
Same-store growth is the cheapest growth on your board. You already own those patients.
Standardization fails when it arrives as a 40-page manual. It holds when each standard is one rule, one owner, and one number reviewed on a set day. Three examples that travel across locations without modification:
One number for each, reviewed the same day every week. That is the whole design. A team can absorb three standards. It cannot absorb thirty.
The Operational Diagnostic and Gap Assessment is the entry point. A current-state process map, an operational gap inventory scored by impact, a baseline KPI snapshot pulled from your practice management system, and a findings summary with the top three fixes ranked, each tied to a dollar or a metric. Delivered over a discovery call, a data pull, on-site observation, and a readout. Starting at $7,400*.
From there the diagnostic points to the fix. Operating Systems and Workflow Design rebuilds patient flow, scheduling templates, handoff protocols, the revenue cycle workflow, and the role and accountability map. Performance Visibility and Accountability Infrastructure builds the dashboard, the KPI set by role and location, the operating cadence, and the escalation rules, so the numbers get acted on instead of read once and filed. Where the gap is already clear, we scope the fix directly.
Both are priced to scope after the diagnostic says what the build takes. Then we develop your team to run it, and stay until it holds.
*Scales with location count and complexity. Travel billed separately at cost.
Above 50 locations, GME is not the right size for this work and will say so. Orthodontics is where we go deepest. The work runs across general and multi-specialty dental as well, and that ortho depth is what makes a multi-specialty build hold up.
The method underneath it: Lean Six Sigma in dental operations →
As a co-founding executive for a multi-state platform, she designed the workflow, roles, onboarding, and performance standards behind a franchise-like orthodontic concept. Before that she built and ran practices on the operations side. She later spent four years taking practices to market as a sell-side broker, and since 2025 has run operational due diligence for buy-side clients of an investment banking firm.
Gretchen leads every engagement. Specialists join based on what the work needs.
Because each acquired or opened location arrives with its own scheduling logic, hygiene protocols, billers, and confirmation habits, and nobody is assigned to converge them. The group ends up running several operating systems and calling it one company. Acquisition covers the gap in the reported numbers until it stops covering it.
Ask three questions. What did we standardize in the last 12 months. Who owns it, by name, at each location. What happened at the sites that did not adopt it. A group with a real standard can answer all three. A group without one answers with its growth plan.
Few, and small. A standard holds when it is one rule, one owner, and one number reviewed on a set day. A team can absorb three standards. A 40-page operations manual is how standardization fails, because nothing in it has a name attached.
The Operational Diagnostic and Gap Assessment, starting at $7,400. A current-state process map, a gap inventory scored by impact, a baseline KPI snapshot from your practice management system, and the top three fixes ranked with a dollar or metric on each. Where the gap is already clear, we scope the fix directly instead.
Operating Systems and Workflow Design and Performance Visibility and Accountability Infrastructure are both priced to scope, after the diagnostic says what the build takes. Half the diagnostic fee, capped at $7,500, credits toward a fixed-fee build signed within 3 months.
GME works with dental and orthodontic groups from solo practices through 50 locations. Above 50 locations GME is not the right size for the work and will say so rather than take it.
Tell us how many sites you have, what you have tried to standardize, and where it stopped. We will tell you what we would look at first.
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