The most reliable methods of growing a private medical or dental practice haven’t changed much over the years. And yet they remain a well-kept industry secret.
The particulars might look a bit different from year to year, but the underlying concepts are the same. Creating a well-articulated brand, a strong system that encourages patient compliance, and having a leadership team whose strengths complement one another are the tried-and-true methods for taking your medical or dental practice to the next level.
That’s easier said than done. These business tactics have nothing to do with practicing medicine or dentistry. Private practices are easily lured into false promises of growth during industry conference season. The best ways to take your practice to the next level in 2026 require a renewed look at the core pillars that comprise a successful growth plan.
1. Brand-building
Brand-building starts with the nuts and bolts of any business. That means formulating a purpose, a mission, and a reason for existence — a clear why, and why it matters to the patients and the community — and communicating it to the world. Without those basics, no founder will be able to create a memorable brand, let alone build a performance marketing system that leads to massive growth.
Often, however, private practitioners scrimp on investing time and money in this critical area. That’s owed in part to the fact that the barrier to entry is already high.
It can cost upwards of a million dollars or more just to launch a practice, whether your office is in Little Rock or Rockefeller Plaza. The cost of a new tool, equipment upgrade, or some other kind of capital investment — the shiny new toys advertised during industry conference season — can be high, too. For a doctor or dentist burdened by student loans, in addition to the standard costs of overhead, investing in one’s brand might be an afterthought.
Yet without a memorable brand, a private practice cannot have meaningful growth. Since medical and dental schools don’t teach the nuts and bolts of business and brand-building, the smartest route for a private practitioner — typically — is to partner with a brand-building expert.
2. Patient compliance systems
The idea of building a system that encourages patient compliance doesn’t need to be as complicated as it sounds. Simple is often better.
Take Starbucks. With a couple taps on a user-friendly mobile app, one can buy a cup of coffee, pay for it, then drive up to a window and have their order handed over — all without leaving the car. That’s the kind of frictionless process that encourages customers to spend over and over again.
That process will look different in a medical or dental setting, but the guiding question is the same: What’s your system to move patients (customers) into and out of your office (your sales funnel)? Many private practitioners aren’t giving this basic question the attention it deserves.
The most successful practices scrutinize the details of their physical space from the moment a patient walks into the lobby, from check-in to check-out, as well as their digital consumer-facing products (app, website, brand, social media channels, and any digital products included in their office). These details are nothing new.
Often, however, private practitioners apply backward-looking solutions when forward-thinking solutions are needed to save time and money — and meet today’s patients where they are. An AI agent can pick up a phone and hunt down a lead better than a person, for example. So why are doctors and dentists investing more heavily in their front desk, and the human capital of front desk staff, at all?
3. Leadership team
The answer, often, is that private practitioners are taking cues from someone familiar. Maybe that’s dad, uncle, grandpa, or another family member. Maybe it’s another dentist or doctor who was a private practitioner themselves, someone who got their advice from an industry that fed them the wrong advice for decades. Maybe they inherited a business whose revenues were stagnant, but the family or colleague or friend offered the most powerful example of how to run the practice.
A better approach involves partnering with a team who’s achieved the success you desire before, and whose skills complement those of the practitioner. Breaking with tradition — inviting outside ideas into a family practice, for example — takes courage. To anticipate what’s coming in 2030, it doesn’t necessarily help to have been in business since 1980. It takes forward-thinking leadership.
For practitioners still struggling to make it on their own, your struggles can probably be traced back to a simple fact: what makes a person an expert at one skill doesn’t necessarily translate to the other. Building a brand, and creating a system that encourages customer or patient compliance, has little to do with practicing medicine or dentistry — and much more to do with growing a successful, thriving business.
The solution involves seeking out help where it’s needed, and partnering with others whose skills complement your own. For some practices, that necessarily means big changes are in order for 2026. For others, perhaps a small change can have a massive impact on positive success. Without any changes, the next level will remain unattainable. The status quo of how everyone else operates will produce the same results despite a new year, and 2026 will look a lot like 2025.
About Paul Vigario
Paul Vigario is the founder and CEO of SurfCT, a leading authority in practice strategy, design, brand and technology for private healthcare practices, known for its integrated approach to improving and modernizing operations. Over the past 25 years, Paul has helped more than 12,000 practices worldwide generate more than $36 billion in healthcare revenue, redefining how providers automate, scale, and grow. Widely recognized as a visionary leader and pioneer in healthcare innovation, Mr. Vigario has spent his career advancing the integration of technology, brand, and patient experience in modern healthcare through clarity of vision, purposeful design, and systems that create more success and freedom for doctors.
