Engagement Pricing

Priced Against Enterprise Value.
Not Hours Billed.

Every engagement is a fixed fee, agreed before the data is pulled, and sized against what the audit finds. Phantom EBITDA has three faces; every fee below is priced by which of them you need read, how far back, and how soon.

Selling Buying Remediation Individual Reports Vendors & Groups The Projection Terms

At a Glance

Where are you in the deal?

Stage Engagement Reads Turnaround Fee
Selling, 12 to 24+ months out Sell-Side Baseline The trailing twelve months of practice-management data, reconciled to the income statement Ten business days from extraction $6,500fixed fee · single location
Selling, working the roadmap Quarterly Re-Measure Each trailing twelve months as it rolls Ten business days from each quarter close $12,000per year · billed $3,000 per quarter
Selling, inside 12 months or at the LOI Pre-LOI Defense Five years of practice-management data and three years of financials Ten business days from extraction From $25,000fixed fee · scoped by collections and locations
Buying a practice from a dentist Doctor-to-Doctor Diligence The trailing twelve months, pulled by PDA under the seller's diligence access, or the report set we specify if access is not granted Ten business days from data receipt $5,000fixed fee · per practice
Buying as a DSO or sponsor Institutional Clinical Diligence Three to five years of practice-management data on the target, alongside your financial QoE provider Scoped to the exclusivity window From $25,000per target · scoped per location
After the findings Remediation: Non-Clinical The roadmap 30-day cycles $3,000per month · six-month minimum
After the findings, clinical exposure Remediation: Clinical The roadmap, plus chart samples 30-day cycles $5,000per month · six-month minimum
Any stage Individual Reports Twelve months, one question Ten business days from extraction $495 to $2,500per report

Selling

Twelve months is the asset. Five years is the inference engine.

A buyer prices your trailing twelve months and reads everything before it the way an underwriter reads a driving record. The Baseline reads the asset while there is still time to fix what it finds. Pre-LOI Defense reads the whole record, documents what cannot be fixed in time, and argues it.

Sell-Side Baseline

Twelve months. All three faces. The buyer's audit, run first.

$6,500 fixed fee · single location
For
Owners twelve to twenty-four months or more from market
Reads
The trailing twelve months of practice-management data, reconciled to the income statement
Turnaround
Ten business days from extraction
  • Accounting face: preliminary normalization and the EBITDA bridge
  • Operational face: provider and diagnostic dependency, schedule integrity, new-patient funnel, retention
  • Clinical face: CDT utilization against payer benchmarks, internal-code exposure, ledger integrity
  • The Practice Intelligence Brief: findings workbook and dashboard
  • 60-minute findings session with the owner and designated advisors
  • Phased remediation roadmap: dollars, owner, timeline, and the proof metric for each item

Additional locations scoped per location. Any Individual Report ordered in the prior 90 days is credited toward the fee.

Order →

Pre-LOI Defense

Five years. The full lookback a buyer and a payer will read, with PDA in the room when they read it.

From $25,000 fixed fee · scoped by collections and locations
Single location, under $3M collections $25,000
Single location, $3M to $7M collections $35,000
Over $7M, or multi-location, scoped per location $45,000+
For
Owners within twelve months of market, or already holding a letter of intent
Reads
Five years of practice-management data and three years of financials
Turnaround
Ten business days from extraction
  • Everything in the Baseline, on the full five-year window
  • Coding-pattern lookback: what a payment-integrity review would find, quantified and reserved
  • The Clinical Quality of Earnings report and the Sanitized EBITDA bridge
  • Data-room-ready package: every finding documented, every add-back with its invoice
  • Remediation roadmap sequenced to the transaction timeline
  • Response support through close: PDA on the calls when the buyer's QoE team sends the question list

This is the Clinical Quality of Earnings, delivered sell-side. Never both sides of the same transaction.

Request scoping →

Quarterly Re-Measure

The Baseline re-run every quarter, so the improvement is proven rather than claimed.

$12,000 per year · billed $3,000 per quarter
For
Baseline clients working a roadmap on a defined exit horizon
Reads
Each trailing twelve months as it rolls
Turnaround
Ten business days from each quarter close
  • Quarterly re-run of the Baseline audit
  • Dashboard update
  • Roadmap progress against prior findings, the assist matrix included
  • Quarterly review call

Requires a completed Baseline. Not engaged within 90 days of an active transaction; that window is Pre-LOI Defense.

Request scoping →

Buying

The financial QoE verifies the money was collected. This verifies how.

Whether the buyer is an associate with a bank behind them or a sponsor with a transaction accountant, the clinical ledger is the half of diligence nobody on the deal team opens. PDA opens it. Never for both sides of the same transaction.

Doctor-to-Doctor Diligence

The clinical read on the practice you are about to finance.

$5,000 fixed fee · per practice
For
Associates and individual buyers, and the lenders financing them
Reads
The trailing twelve months, pulled by PDA under the seller's diligence access, or the report set we specify if access is not granted
Turnaround
Ten business days from data receipt
  • Clinical scrub: coding patterns, internal codes, credit balances and refunds, AR
  • Owner dependency: who diagnoses, who presents, who completes
  • Findings memo with price and terms implications
  • One-page lender summary: normalized earnings by year, the trend, and debt service coverage at the proposed price and terms
  • One call with the buyer and, if wanted, the lender

No remediation roadmap; it is not your practice yet. If PDA has worked for the seller, we decline. Available inside a lender's engagement as the clinical addendum to the financial QoE that SBA SOP 50 10 8.1 requires on $3M+ acquisition loans from October 1, 2026.

Order →

Institutional Clinical Diligence

The addendum to your financial QoE: the two faces it never opens.

From $25,000 per target · scoped per location
For
DSOs, private-equity and independent sponsors, and their lenders
Reads
Three to five years of practice-management data on the target, alongside your financial QoE provider
Turnaround
Scoped to the exclusivity window
  • Operational face: diagnostic dependency, patient-base durability, schedule integrity, integration fit
  • Clinical face: coding-pattern exposure, internal-code production, ledger integrity, payer overpayment
  • Exposure quantified for reserve, escrow, and indemnity sizing
  • Investment-committee-ready findings memo with per-location detail

Delivered alongside the financial QoE, never replacing it. Never both sides of the same transaction.

Request scoping →

Looking at a practice right now?

You don't have to order first. Fifteen minutes on the practice in front of you, what the asking price assumes, and which of the two reads fits: book a buyer call. If PDA has worked for the seller, you'll hear it in the first minute.

For lenders · SBA SOP 50 10 8.1

From October 1, 2026, SBA 7(a) acquisition loans of $3 million or more require an independent Quality of Earnings prepared for the lender. That report validates that the money moved. For a dental target, PDA delivers the clinical layer inside the same lender engagement, alongside the financial QoE, never replacing it. The rule, read for dental practices →

After the Findings

The roadmap is the scope. The proof metric is the deliverable.

Non-Clinical fixes the operational face: the systems, the accountability, and the reporting that proves the practice runs without its owner. Clinical adds a dentist to the team for the third face, because coding patterns and documentation standards are not a consultant's call to make.

Remediation: Non-Clinical

The operational face, fixed: accountability, SOPs, and the data layer that proves it.

$3,000 per month · six-month minimum
For
Practices working a Baseline or Defense roadmap
Reads
The roadmap
Turnaround
30-day cycles
  • Accountability cadence with the owner and team
  • SOPs for the workflows the audit flagged
  • Reporting layer built from the practice software: assist matrix, presentation, reappointment, schedule
  • Monthly progress against the roadmap's proof metrics

Requires a completed Baseline or Pre-LOI Defense; the roadmap is the scope. Groups scoped per location.

Request scoping →

Remediation: Clinical

Everything in Non-Clinical, plus a dentist on the team for the clinical face.

$5,000 per month · six-month minimum
For
Practices whose audit found coding-pattern or documentation exposure
Reads
The roadmap, plus chart samples
Turnaround
30-day cycles
  • Everything in Non-Clinical
  • A DDS on the engagement for coding-pattern correction and documentation standards
  • Internal codes mapped to CDT and claimed
  • Chart sampling against the documented clinical rationale

Requires a completed Baseline or Pre-LOI Defense. The clinical add is $2,000 per month over Non-Clinical.

Request scoping →

Individual Reports

One question. Ten business days.

Each report answers one question from twelve months of your practice-management data, built to the same standard as the full audit. Ordered online, invoiced at order, extracted after the Business Associate Agreement is signed. Any report ordered in the prior 90 days is credited toward a Sell-Side Baseline.

UCR Fee Schedule Review

Annual
$495

Every office fee against percentile fee data by code, weighted by your own procedure volume. The codes where you are leaving the most money, in dollar order, and the fee-for-service revenue forecast if you move them.

Order → Fee schedule analysis →

Clinical Risk Assessment

$1,500

The Clinical Scrub on twelve months: CDT utilization ratios by provider against payer bands, production under non-CDT internal codes, insurance collection rate, credit balances and refunds. What a payment-integrity review would flag, before it does, and the one read that neither a financial QoE nor a buyer's standard diligence currently runs.

Order → The Clinical Scrub →

New Patient Funnel

$2,500

Every new patient for twelve months, by source, through exam, treatment presented, treatment completed, and reappointment. Marketing spend measured against retained patients, not against calls.

Order → The Acquisition Addiction →

Treatment Trajectory

$2,500

Where every active patient stands: next appointment on the books or not, proposed treatment aging, hygiene re-care, the 18-month base status. Hygiene reappointment and retention read the way buyers weigh them, ahead of everyday case acceptance; acceptance measured as scheduled, completed, or accepted over twelve months, with high-dollar cases broken out.

Order → The Treatment Trajectory →

Owner Dependency

$2,500

What leaves with the owner: referral-driven new-patient flow, treatment presented and completed by provider (the assist matrix), and the replacement cost of every role the owner fills against market pay for it.

Order → The Point Guard →

Why the fee schedule is $495

A fee-for-service practice should re-price every year, and most never do, because nobody has shown them the gap in dollar order. The review is priced so the decision belongs to the office manager, not the budget. Run it annually. If it finds what it usually finds, you will know which report to order next.

Vendors & Groups

Quoted per engagement.

Independent Validation Study

Third-party data on your product, from a firm that does not sell it.

Quoted per study
For
Dental product and software teams
Reads
Practice-level data from your customers, extracted and measured by PDA
Turnaround
Scoped per study
  • A methodology agreed and published before the data is pulled
  • Findings stated with denominators and windows
  • A case study you can put in front of a DSO

You pay for the study, not the result. PDA keeps the right to publish null findings, and vendor work never appears in PDA diligence.

Request a quote →

Group & DSO Data Architecture

SOPs backed by onboarding, backed by reporting, backed by accountability.

Quoted per engagement
For
Emerging groups and DSOs
Reads
Your practice software, your reporting stack, your org chart
Turnaround
Scoped per engagement
  • Reporting layer designed from the practice software up
  • The accountability structure that turns a dashboard into an operating system
  • Onboarding and training tied to the SOPs the reports measure

The model James built as a Regional Director at NADG, sized for a group that is not 200 locations yet.

Request a quote →

Independence

The fee is the fee.

Never both sides

PDA never works for the buyer and the seller on the same transaction. If we have worked for one, we decline the other.

Fixed fee, never a success fee

No percentage of the deal, no broker commissions, no referral fees from lenders or vendors. The fee is the fee.

Vendor work stays separate

Independent Validation Studies are methodology-first, and vendor work never appears in PDA diligence.

Data Handling

Read-only. De-identified. Purged.

Business Associate Agreement first

Executed before any practice-management data is extracted. No data is accepted until it is signed.

Read-only extraction

Native PMS reporting in a one- to three-hour remote session. No integrations installed, no write access.

De-identified analysis

Patient identifiers are stripped at extraction. Findings are reported at the code, provider, and ledger level.

Purged at close

Extracted data is destroyed at engagement close and never retained on external systems.

What the Fee Protects

One practice. Three faces. Five years.

The practice from The Three Faces of Phantom EBITDA: about $10 million of income, multi-provider, clean books, a CPA who did his job, and Defensible EBITDA below zero once the clinical ledger was read. Reported EBITDA of about $720,000 normalized to about $595,000; underneath sat $680,000 of coding-pattern exposure with every claim paid and $1.5 million of production under internal codes. Today it sells to one kind of buyer at one kind of price. Here is the program that changes both, and what it costs.

The Program

Year 1

Sell-Side Baseline

Twelve months, all three faces, the roadmap

 $6,500

Year 1

Remediation: Clinical, 12 months at $5,000

The clinical face closed: internal codes to CDT, coding patterns corrected, credit balances refunded, documentation standards

 $60,000

Years 2 to 3

Remediation: Non-Clinical, 24 months at $3,000

The operational and accounting faces closed: assist matrix, associates in the exam chair, presentation and reappointment systems, owner compensation at market for a full year

 $72,000
Three-year program $138,500

Years 4 to 5

Quarterly Re-Measure, optional

 $24,000

At market

Pre-LOI Defense, over $7M collections

 $45,000+
All-in through the wire about $207,500

$138,500 over three years moves the practice from a number that will not survive diligence to one proven over a trailing twelve months, and from the only buyer who will price it today to the buyers who pay 8 to 9×. That is a $25 million to $30 million shift. The program is about 0.5 percent of it, roughly 200 times over. The accounting face alone, the $125,000 that normalized out, had already taken about $875,000 off the price before a chart was opened.

A projection, not an appraisal. Stages and values are the market-by-stage reads from the exemplar's Clinical Quality of Earnings scenario ladder; multiples per FOCUS Investment Banking (add-on 5–8×, platform 9–11×). The Certain stage assumes every operating lever reaches benchmark and holds for a trailing twelve months; the realizable planning case sits at 30 to 50 percent of that ceiling. Dollar figures rounded; ratios exact.

Terms

Engagement Terms

Payment

Fixed-fee engagements: 50% at execution, 50% at delivery. Individual Reports: invoiced at order, due before extraction. Remediation: monthly in advance. Quarterly Re-Measure: quarterly in advance. All invoices net-15.

Turnaround

Sell-side engagements, Doctor-to-Doctor Diligence, and Individual Reports: ten business days from extraction. Institutional diligence: scoped to the exclusivity window. Remediation runs on 30-day cycles; the Quarterly Re-Measure delivers within ten business days of each quarter close.

Scope

Every fee above is for a single location unless stated. Additional locations are scoped per location before execution. Any expansion beyond the original parameters is documented and quoted separately before the work begins.

Confidentiality

A Business Associate Agreement is executed before extraction. Practice identifiers are sanitized in every deliverable, extracted data is purged at engagement close, and nothing is retained on external systems. Anonymized findings may appear in PDA research only with the practice unidentifiable.

Disclaimers

PDA provides forensic practice intelligence and operational analysis. PDA does not provide legal, tax, or investment advice. Valuation scenarios are analytical models, not appraisals. The dentist on a Clinical remediation engagement advises on coding and documentation and does not treat patients or supervise care.

Frequently Asked Questions

Pricing FAQ

How much does a sell-side Quality of Earnings cost for a dental practice?

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Precision Dental Analytics prices it by stage. The Sell-Side Baseline is $6,500: the trailing twelve months across all three faces of Phantom EBITDA (accounting, operational, clinical), a findings workbook and dashboard, a 60-minute session, and a remediation roadmap, in ten business days from extraction. Pre-LOI Defense is the full Clinical Quality of Earnings on five years of data with response support through close: $25,000 for a single location under $3M in collections, $35,000 for $3M to $7M, and $45,000 and up for practices over $7M or multi-location groups, scoped per location. Both are fixed fees; PDA never takes a success fee.

How much does buy-side due diligence cost for a dental practice purchase?

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Doctor-to-Doctor Diligence is $5,000 per practice for associates, individual buyers, and the lenders financing them: a clinical scrub of the trailing twelve months, an owner-dependency read, and a findings memo with price and terms implications, in ten business days. Institutional Clinical Diligence for DSOs and sponsors starts at $25,000 per target, scoped per location, and is delivered alongside the buyer's financial QoE as the clinical addendum, with exposure quantified for reserve, escrow, and indemnity sizing. PDA never works both sides of the same transaction.

What is the difference between the Sell-Side Baseline and Pre-LOI Defense?

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The window and the job. The Baseline reads twelve months, which is the asset a buyer prices, and its purpose is a roadmap with time to execute it: it is built for owners a year or more from market. Pre-LOI Defense reads five years, which is the inference engine a buyer and a payer use to discount the year ahead, and its purpose is defense: a data-room-ready package, a coding-pattern lookback quantified and reserved, and PDA on the calls when the buyer's Quality of Earnings team sends the question list. A Baseline finds what to fix. A Defense documents what could not be fixed in time and argues it.

Why is PDA priced per engagement rather than by the hour?

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Because the fee is sized against what the audit finds and what the program moves, not against time spent. In the practice used throughout PDA's writing, reported EBITDA of about $720,000 normalized to about $595,000; at a 7× multiple that $125,000 adjustment moved the price by about $875,000 before anyone opened a chart. The full program on that practice, a $6,500 Baseline plus three years of remediation (one clinical at $5,000 a month, two non-clinical at $3,000 a month), is $138,500. The projected shift is from $6M to $7M today, an individual buyer pricing on collections, to $32M to $36M at platform-scale multiples once about $4M of defensible EBITDA is proven for a trailing twelve months: roughly 200 times the fee, or about half of one percent of the move.

Does PDA take a success fee or work for both the buyer and the seller?

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No to both. Every engagement is a fixed fee agreed before extraction, with no percentage of the deal, no broker commissions, and no referral fees from lenders or vendors. PDA never works for the buyer and the seller on the same transaction; if the firm has worked for one side, it declines the other. Vendor work, delivered as Independent Validation Studies, is methodology-first and never appears in PDA diligence.

What does remediation cost, and when is a dentist added to the team?

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Remediation: Non-Clinical is $3,000 per month and fixes the operational face: an accountability cadence, SOPs for the workflows the audit flagged, and a reporting layer built from the practice software. Remediation: Clinical is $5,000 per month and adds a DDS to the engagement when the audit found coding-pattern or documentation exposure: internal codes mapped to CDT and claimed, documentation standards, and chart sampling against the clinical rationale. Both carry a six-month minimum and require a completed Baseline or Pre-LOI Defense, because the roadmap is the scope.

Can I order a single report without a full engagement?

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Yes. Five Individual Reports are ordered online: the UCR Fee Schedule Review ($495, run annually), Clinical Risk Assessment ($1,500), New Patient Funnel ($2,500), Treatment Trajectory ($2,500), and Owner Dependency ($2,500). Each is built from a read-only extraction of the practice-management system after a Business Associate Agreement is signed, and any report ordered in the prior 90 days is credited toward a Sell-Side Baseline.

The Next Step

Not sure which engagement?

The briefing determines fit. We'll tell you which window you're in, what it needs read, and whether it's a single report or the full audit.

Schedule a Briefing → Order a Report →

Confidential intake. Responded to within 48 hours.

Related

Clinical Quality of Earnings → All Services → Exit Timeline → Who to Hire → Case Files →