New York City-based Rising Tide Dental Partners plans to prioritize same-store growth, doctor mentorship and operational efficiency to continue scaling its network as the company eyes 100 supported offices.
Rising Tide Dental Partners launched in 2025 with 27 practices in 11 states. The company recently added six offices, increasing its revenue by 15% and its geographic footprint by 22%.
CEO Anthony Leonetti, DMD, recently spoke with Becker’s to discuss the company’s growth and goals for expansion.
Note: Responses were lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: How would you describe Rising Tide’s growth this year?
Dr. Anthony Leonetti: I would say we’ve had massive growth this year. We formed in January 2025, and we now have 33 locations with about $62 million in revenue and about 400 employees. We just closed our largest partnership to date, which was six practices and about $7 million in revenue across those practices. We grow fast, but we’re trying to grow the same way every time. We have a model that is working so that we have speed with structure, so the platform gets stronger as we’re growing and not messier, which sometimes tends to happen when you grow fast.
We were always planning to grow rapidly, and when we put this together, that was the plan. We built this so that we can do that and we can scale that way. Everything we’ve been building since day one was in the mind that we want to be able to grow quickly but safely, so our doctors are not losing as we’re growing and things are not getting more complicated.
Q: What do you attribute the company’s growth to?
AL: I think our model is a little bit unique. We are 100% dentist owned, so doctors join our group as owners through equity. They keep their brand, they keep their clinical autonomy, and we will all have a liquidity event together at some point. So, it’s a little bit of a different model and because of that, we have happy doctor partners. They recruit the next doctor partners, so our pipeline is very relationship driven. I think that’s a big factor. Another thing is timing. Right now, dentists are feeling squeezed by staffing issues. There’s insurance friction. There’s an admin burden. All of these things are having independent dentists look for partners or someone to help carry the burden, and not just a private equity rollup, so I think that’s where we fall in, and I think that gives us a leg up.
Over the year and a half since we formed, we have a really good infrastructure, so we centralized finance, HR reporting, and then some payer strategies we built early on, so our partners plug into something real as soon as they join us, and that has really helped drive our growth. Our people also [have helped drive our growth] at the location level. They stand behind these doctors when they join our group, and that growth holds because the teams are open and support their doctors, which is the huge factor there.
Q: What are the company’s goals for future organic and inorganic growth?
AL: Our goal is to have 100 locations by the end of 2028, so we want to be somewhere between 10 and 22 partnerships per year. For the rest of 2026, we’re currently integrating the six transactions we just closed, and we have about another four to five in our pipeline we’re planning on closing.
Same-store growth is really important, so we implement recall reactivations, we do front desk conversion training, we have different payer strategies, and we try to start standardizing some simple tasks where we can get economies of scale without changing too much of the actual clinic that the doctors are practicing at.
We have a tech stack we think is helpful, that our doctors enjoy and that we start to implement once they come on board. One of our pillars is innovation, so we’re finding different ways to use AI to standardize and streamline processes across the platform, whether it’s with revenue cycle management that we’re building, or using something like Overjet or Pearl, where we are laying that on top of our X-rays, and our doctors are getting higher case acceptance rates because patients can actually see what’s happening. That’s helping a lot with our organic growth.
We also built and are continuing to develop a mentorship and guidance program, so we try to elevate our doctors and we pair them up with other doctors in our group, that way our partners can share their wisdom that they’ve gained through years and years of practicing dentistry. That will help elevate our younger doctors, and then they can treat patients more efficiently, better quality of care for our patients, and then just even better communication with the patients, so that patients are getting more of the treatment they need with less barriers, and that’s what we’re trying to promote. Partnerships are important, and they get press like this every time we add a new practice, but same-store growth is what actually is going to continue to pay our bills and keep us growing organically. That’s really important for us.
Q: What can you share about the company’s plans for de novo openings?
AL: For de novos, we’re usually staying in the region we have a presence in. We’re looking at a couple different locations right now that we’re evaluating — one in New Jersey, one in Florida and one in New York — so we think we’ve built a structure and a plan that can build it out relatively cheaply for Rising Tide and its partners, and that can scale growth pretty rapidly.
Q: How does Rising Tide’s structure differ from other DSOs?
AL: We are really a doctor-owned, doctor-led partnership organization. All of our doctors have real equity. There’s no earnouts. The practices keep their names and community identity. Our clinical decisions stay with the clinicians. I’m a practicing dentist. Our board is all dentists, all with their licenses and all pretty much practicing. The platform we have here was built by dental operators, not financial engineers. So, where PE-backed [companies] sometimes would see dentists as employees, we think dentists [are] entrepreneurs that can continue to grow our company, not just employees that can work a handpiece.
It’s really important that [our doctors] have a partnership and they feel they’re part of our group, and that they’re involved in all the decisions. We have committee meetings — whether it’s a clinical committee or the HR committee or the CapEx committee — so all of our doctor partners are welcome to join whatever committees they want, and all major decisions are made in that committee. Whether it’s adding a new clinical standard or implementing a new software or a new tech stack — it’s all run through these committees where they all come in and have a say in where the company is going and how we’re going to continue to build the company. We’re not an unknown holding company up top where no one really knows who’s making the decisions. Our actual dentists who are on the ground are helping make all the decisions and are actually partners in the group.
At the Becker’s 5th Annual Future of Dentistry Roundtable, taking place September 14-15 in Chicago, dental leaders and executives will gain insights into emerging technologies, practice growth strategies and the evolving landscape of dental care delivery, with a focus on innovation, patient experience and operational excellence. Apply for complimentary registration now.
