Solutions 101, Oklahoma City, OK (2026)

09/23/2026

A full schedule can hide a shrinking margin.

Medicare Advantage carriers are changing the rules. UnitedHealthcare changed dental benefits for 2026. Humana says its planned 2027 plan exits will affect approximately 600,000 members. Aetna is changing how its Medicare Advantage plans access Connection Dental.

The carriers are making business decisions. Dentists need to make informed business decisions, too.

Before you sign another contract to keep a handful of patients, find out what it does to reimbursement across your entire practice. Your contracts overlap. The name on a patient’s insurance card may not tell you which agreement controls the fee.

And ask the company advising you a direct question: Do you have carrier NDAs, ownership interests, or other relationships that limit what you can tell me? Will you put the answer in writing?

Solutions 101 is independent. We have zero carrier NDAs, and we put our independence in writing. Our recommendations are based on actual carrier payouts from the largest dental reimbursement database in the country, built for our clients.

The carriers know their margins. Do you know yours?

Read the full article: https://www.solutions101.com/medicare-advantage-dental-contracts/

05/27/2026

Dentists are not always held back by insurance companies.

Sometimes they are held back by fear.

Fear that changing PPO participation will upset patients.
Fear that the front desk will struggle.
Fear that the office manager or insurance coordinator will have harder conversations.
Fear that making a strategic move will create temporary discomfort.

So the practice hits the “easy button.”

Stay in network everywhere.
Avoid difficult conversations.
Accept the write-offs.
Keep the system simple for the team.

But here is the problem:

Easy for the office does not always mean profitable for the owner.

For many practices, PPO contracts did their job. They helped build the patient base. They filled chairs. They made new-patient acquisition easier.

But once those contracts stop supporting the economics of the practice, the owner has to be willing to look at them differently.

This does not mean reckless terminations.
It does not mean creating chaos.
It does not mean guessing.

It means using data to determine which contracts are helping, which are hurting, and which ones need a different strategy.

At some point, every practice owner has to ask:

Are we making PPO decisions based on data, or are we making them based on fear?

Read the full article here:
https://www.solutions101.com/dentists-getting-in-their-own-way/

05/22/2026

Most dental practice breakthroughs do not happen overnight.

They look sudden from the outside.

But inside the practice, they are usually the result of months of work:

• Better PPO strategy
• Better reimbursement data
• Better team communication
• Better patient conversations
• Better ex*****on when things feel slow

The hardest part is the “nothing is happening” phase.

That is where many practices quit too early.

But real momentum is often building before the numbers fully show it.

The tipping point is earned long before it is visible.

New on the S101 Blog:
The Tipping Point in a Dental Practice Happens Before Everyone Can See It

https://www.solutions101.com/dental-practice-growth-tipping-point/

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05/21/2026

Most dental practices are carrying contracts that should have been reviewed years ago.

They signed the agreement.
They accepted the fee schedule.
They got credentialed.
They moved on.

But the carriers did not stop moving.

They changed plan designs.
They shifted networks.
They adjusted leased access relationships.
They modified reimbursement behavior.
They made strategic changes around the practice.

And many offices never looked back.

That is the trap.

Dentists often think leaving contracts alone (or "negotiating the fees every year") creates stability. In reality, outdated contracts can quietly become one of the biggest reasons a practice works harder while keeping less.

Sometimes asking for higher fees is enough.

Sometimes it is not.

Sometimes the smarter move is to replace the contract.
Sometimes it is to restructure the relationship.
Sometimes it is to opt out.
Sometimes it is to end the agreement entirely.

Every ending creates space for a better beginning.

The practices that barely survive are often the ones that keep every outdated contract in place because the process feels too cumbersome to challenge.

The practices that grow are the ones willing to ask:

What needs to end so the next stage of this practice can begin?

New on the S101 Blog:
Why Dental Practices Must Know When to End an Insurance Contract

https://www.solutions101.com/dental-insurance-contract-review/

05/19/2026

Dentistry has become an industry of copying.

One doctor drops a PPO…
and suddenly everyone thinks they should.

Another office adds a membership plan…
and social media acts like it is the answer to everything.

A consultant pushes a new script.
A speaker talks about AI.
Someone posts a “perfect schedule.”

And practices start copying methods without understanding the principles underneath them.

That is where offices get into trouble.

Because no two practices are the same.

Different:
• Patients
• Teams
• Insurance mix
• Overhead
• Market saturation
• Clinical philosophy
• Leadership styles

What works beautifully in one office can completely fail in another.

The practices that actually grow long term are usually not the ones chasing every trend.

They are the ones focused on:
• Building strong systems
• Creating real SOPs
• Training their teams
• Understanding their numbers
• Making strategic decisions
• Adapting as dentistry changes

The method is not the advantage.

The understanding is.

New on the S101 Blog:
“What Works for One Dental Practice Can Fail in Another”
https://www.solutions101.com/dental-practice-strategy/

05/05/2026

A lot of dental offices think they need more patients.

So they grab another PPO contract.
Join another network.
Accept another discounted fee schedule.

And yes, sometimes it fills the schedule.

But here is the problem:

More patients under the wrong reimbursement model can make the practice busier and less profitable at the same time.

That is not scaling.

That is volume pressure.

Real growth comes from getting the right patients under the right contracts with the right reimbursement strategy.

The tipping point does not happen because you panic and say yes to every network.

It happens after disciplined work:
better payer mix
better fee positioning
better patient communication
better timing
better strategy

More patients are not the answer if the economics are wrong.

New on the S101 blog:
Scaling Dental Patients the Right Way
https://www.solutions101.com/scaling-patients/

04/15/2026

Most dental practices think growth comes from:

More systems
More reports
More data

Those are necessary tools, but that is not where real change happens.

The biggest breakthroughs we see in practices come from something else:

Interaction.

When the doctor and team are in the same room…
When real conversations happen…
When problems finally come out into the open…

That is where everything shifts.

We call it emergence.

It is the moment when:

• Your team finally understands how to shift patients' conversations about their dental insurance and not just being in or out of network

• Your team connects the dots with patients on revenue loss vs network status

• You realize the problem was never what you thought it was and you give your team a resource through that process

That does NOT happen on Zoom.

That does NOT come from a report.

That is why we go on-site.

Because you cannot fix a practice solely from a spreadsheet.

New on the S101 Blog:
Why Real Growth in a Dental Practice Happens In Person
https://www.solutions101.com/dental-practice-growth-in-person/

04/06/2026

Most dental practices are not stuck because they are not working hard enough.

They are stuck because of one constraint.

And until that constraint is fixed…
growth does not happen.

Usually it is one of these three:

1. Sales constraint
You do not have enough of the right patients or your payer mix is working against you.

2. Delivery constraint
You are busy, booked out, and maxed out… but still not growing the way you should.

3. Operations constraint
Patients are coming in, the team is working hard, but everything feels harder than it should and margins are getting squeezed.

The mistake most practices make?

They try to fix everything at once.

More marketing.
More staff.
More systems.
More noise.

The practices that actually grow do something different:

They identify the real constraint
and fix that first.

Everything else is a distraction.

New on the S101 blog:
What Is Stopping Your Dental Practice Growth? Identify the Constraint

https://www.solutions101.com/dental-practice-growth/

04/05/2026

Most dentists don’t fail at making changes…

They fail at keeping them.

Here’s what happens:

You get frustrated with PPOs
You decide something has to change
You start moving in the right direction

Then…

The team gets nervous
Patients ask questions
The schedule has a few holes

And suddenly…

Everything snaps back.

Back to the same plans
Back to the same write-offs
Back to the same frustration

This is not a motivation problem.

It’s a structure problem.

If the old way is still easy to fall back to…
you will fall back to it.

Every time.

The practices that actually improve don’t just decide to change.

They build structure so the old way is no longer the default.

Because if your strategy only works when you feel confident…

it won’t survive when things get uncomfortable.

New on the S101 blog. www.solutions101.com/snappingback

04/04/2026

When is the right time to renegotiate your PPO contracts?

Most dentists say:
“After the holidays…”
“After we hire…”
“When things slow down…”

Here’s the truth:

There is never a perfect time.
But there is a right time.
And that time is NOW.

Why?

Because nothing in dental benefits happens overnight.

Contracts take ~90 days just to terminate or reposition
A proper Delta Dental transition takes ~6 months
And in 6 months… we’re walking straight into Open Enrollment

If you wait, you’re already behind.

The biggest fear we hear is:
“What if we lose patients?”

But here’s what actually happens when transitions are done correctly:

✔ 3–5% attrition (non-Delta)
✔ 8–12% attrition (Delta)
✔ About half of those patients come back

Patients don’t leave because you changed networks.

They leave when:
❌ They feel blindsided
❌ They choose the wrong plan

The problem?

Too many offices try to do this on their own.

They:

Follow bad advice
Ignore leasing networks
Guess at strategy

And end up losing patients and money.

So when should you start?

Now.

Because:

The bad thing about dental benefits is nothing happens overnight…
The good thing is nothing happens overnight.

Plan it right.
Execute it strategically.

And start getting paid correctly for the patients you already have.

www.solutions101.com/pponow

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