Updated October 2026
Dental and medical practices: what your office records could pay
Your practice has years of scheduling, insurance follow-up, referral letters and staff procedures sitting next to the patient charts. AI companies now pay to license copies of office records like these, but patient information is the hardest data any business can offer, and several buyers will not take it at all. So start with the office side, and with a few questions.1,2,3
What buyers want
What would a buyer want from my practice?
The part buyers ask for is the work of running the office: booking and rescheduling, referral coordination, insurance and billing follow-up, the front desk's procedures and the email around all of it. micro1 and Polyshares both list healthcare administration among the industries they take, and Mercor lists healthcare. Endless, a broker, describes the same split, with care coordination, referral workflows and scheduling in scope and patient health information excluded entirely.1,4,5,2
Charts, X-rays and clinical notes are a different matter. Health records are often left out of deals altogether, and regulated data lowers the price. A practice that offers only its office records is the simpler deal, and usually the faster one to agree.3,6
Do you qualify
Is my practice big enough?
Size is the first hurdle. Most buyers want 20 to 30 or more employees, and a few state no minimum. A single-dentist office of eight people sits under most floors, while a group practice or a clinic with several locations may clear them. Regulated records can usually be left out of a deal, so the office side can go ahead on its own.7,8,9,10
The quiz asks how many people you employ and which systems you run, then introduces you only to the buyers we work with that take a practice like yours.
What it could pay
What could a practice's records pay?
No buyer publishes a price for a dental or medical practice. For operating companies in general, published ranges mostly run $100K to $2M, as the buyers' own claims, and regulated data pulls a practice toward the low end. You may also have seen Shfa.ai, a health-data broker, claim payouts of $943,000 and $1.2M to unnamed healthcare companies; nothing in its ads lets you check those figures.11,12,13,6,14
Your patients
Keeping patients out of it
Patient details turn up even in office email: a referral letter, a billing dispute, a note about a missed appointment. Removing names does not make a record anonymous, and one study found 99.98% of Americans could be re-identified from 15 demographic attributes. A small practice's patients are local, so a note about a rare procedure on a known date can point to one person.15
Ask each buyer who removes patient details, by what method, and whether you see a cleaned sample before anything is released. The buyers we work with show you a cleaned sample first. Whether HIPAA or your state board lets you license any of it goes to the buyer's team and your own counsel before you share a sample, and their answers decide what goes in.16,17
Next step
How much work is it for my office?
FAQ
Questions, answered with sources
Sometimes. Research found 99.98% of Americans could be re-identified from 15 demographic attributes, which is why you review a cleaned sample before release.15
Every business is different, so this one is best talked through with the buyer you're working with. Their team goes over it with you before anything is signed.
Every business is different, so this one is best talked through with the buyer you're working with. Their team goes over it with you before anything is signed.
Before you sign
Questions to talk through with your buyer
Every business is different, so these are best talked through with the buyer you're working with. Their team goes over them with you before anything is signed.
Questions for this kind of business
- Who certifies the method used to remove patient details, and do we see the certification?
- Are our administrative records free of patient information, and who checks?
- How do CCPA, GDPR, UK GDPR and state privacy laws apply, and is de-identified data still personal information?
- Do professional rules apply (AICPA, IRC 7216, HIPAA, ABA Model Rule 1.17, insurance agency contracts, adviser rules, state boards)?
Questions for any buyer
- Is the license exclusive, and for how long?
- Can you sublicense the data, and to whom?
- Which AI labs will receive it, and will you tell us?
- How long do you keep it, and how is it deleted?
- What is your liability cap, and who indemnifies whom?
- Will the contract ban re-identification of people in the data?
- Who removes personal data, by what method, and do we approve it first?