DSO Delaware Valley Management Holdings, Inc, Sold by Beekman Group

DSOs can provide up and coming dental practices with the support behind the scenes they need, and their popularity only continues to grow.

Delaware Valley Management Holdings, Inc., a leading Dental Service Organizations (DSO) in the greater Philadelphia market, supporting 20 dental practices, was recently sold by The Beekman Group. The private equity firm that first invested in its establishment.

Louis A. D’Angelo, DMD, partnered with The Beekman Group in May of 2014 to first form the DSO to support the dental group founded by Dr. D’Angelo Simply Beautiful Smiles. Delaware Valley Management went on to support the 20 practices under Simply Beautiful Smiles in the New Jersey and Pennsylvania area for non-clinical dental office support and administrative services. The Beekman Group sold Delaware Valley Management to Sun Capital Partners Inc., another private investment firm specializing in buyouts and investments in what it deems as “market-leading” companies.

“The Beekman Group has been a true partner over the last five years. Their experience in building leading dental service organizations and hands-on involvement proved invaluable to our team as we executed on a disciplined acquisition growth plan, expanding from 10 to 20 practices and more than doubling our revenue and cash flow, while maintaining our commitment to support our dentists and staff to provide consistent quality care to our patients. I know Beekman will continue to be successful partnering with owners and entrepreneurs in the lower middle market to grow and professionalize their businesses” Dr. D’Angelo commented on the sale as Delaware Valley Managements CEO and Chief Dental Officer.

DSOs are all across the country and in 2017 7.4% of US dentists were affliated with DSOs. The popularity of the orgnizations is in part due to the large amount of debt recent dental graduates incur after school. Without the proper business acumen, doing the books and marketing can lead to time away from patients and ultimaley effect their practice’s bottom line. DSOs can help practices focus on their patients, doing the necessary work to keep the practice growing that wasn’t focused on dental school.

However, there are some dentisits that would rather handle every aspect of their practice on their own and distrust the corporate nature of DSOs. In a previous report from Dentist’s Money Digest Dr. Dave Preble, senior vice president of the American Dental Association practice institute, voiced concners on DSOs saying, “at no time do we want a world where the making of money, in any aspect of health care — not just dentistry — to be more important than what is truly valued and needed by the patient.”

This acquisition marks a new interest into dental services from the Florida located Sun Capital, but continues the trend of heavy outside investment in Dental groups and DSOs. According to one of their managing directors Jonathan Borell, “Dental service organizations provide essential care within their communities, and we are very excited to be working with Dr. D’Angelo. We’re looking forward to applying our expertise to strengthen this great company and are eager to continue making acquisitions in the dental services space.” At the time of this writing terms of the private transaction were not disclosed.