A dental regional operations manager oversees four or five offices for a dental group. They coach the practice managers who run those offices. Most days are spent on site, fixing staffing gaps, schedule holes and slow collections, while clinical questions stay with the dentists.
By the HireBus team · Updated · Pay data: BLS, May 2025
You'll oversee [four or five] of our dental practices and coach the practice managers who run them. You spend most of the week inside the practices, fixing schedule, staffing and collection problems before they grow. You own the region's results and carry group standards into every office. Clinical questions go to the Clinical Director.
2. Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Coach the practice managers in your region with regular one-on-ones and practice visits, and hold them to their goals.
Review each practice's profit and loss with the CFO and agree on fixes when a practice falls behind plan.
Move hygienists, assistants and front office staff between practices to cover open shifts.
Audit practices for OSHA, infection control, HIPAA, cash handling and schedule templates, and follow up on gaps.
Roll out new group systems and policies in your region and train practice managers on them.
Work with the HR Manager to hire, onboard and, when needed, replace practice managers.
Handle patient complaints and team issues a practice manager can't resolve.
3. Key Tasks / Daily Activities
Spend the day at [one or two] practices: join the morning huddle, watch the front desk and walk the clinical area.
Check the region's numbers: production, collections, schedule fill and unscheduled treatment.
Call practice managers about open shifts, call-outs and holes in tomorrow's schedule.
Check that fixes from your last audit are in place.
Report regional results and staffing risks to the COO.
4. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Production against plan in the region: [your target].
Collections against production in the region: [your target].
Practice audit scores: [your target].
Open shifts covered without canceling patients: [your target].
Practice manager retention: [your target].
5. Required Qualifications and Skills
[5+] years managing dental practices, including [2+] years over more than one location.
Knows the daily rhythm of a dental office: huddles, hygiene recall, treatment presentation, insurance and collections.
Reads [your practice management software] reports, budgets and profit and loss statements with confidence.
Working knowledge of OSHA, infection control and HIPAA rules in dental offices.
Valid driver's license and reliable transportation for daily travel between practices.
6. Preferred Experience
Regional or multi-site manager experience at a dental service organization (DSO).
Has helped bring an acquired practice onto new software and policies.
Started in the front office or as a dental assistant.
Has helped open a new practice.
7. Physical Requirements
Drive between practices most days, and stand and walk during practice visits.
With or without reasonable accommodation.
8. Work Environment and Schedule
Most of the week on the road between practices in [region], with [mileage policy].
Time in clinical areas, following PPE and infection control rules.
Hours that follow practice schedules, including early huddles and some [Saturday] clinic days.
9. Compensation and Benefits
Pay: [range and hourly or salary basis].
Additional pay: [overtime, bonus or incentive terms, or none].
Benefits: [health, dental, vision, retirement, paid time off, and when they start].
10. Company Culture and Overview
[Two or three sentences on what your company does, the area you serve, and the support a new regional operations manager gets in the first 90 days.]
11. How to Apply
[Apply link or email]. Our process: [phone interview, in-person interview, and next steps]. Contact [hiring contact] if you need an accommodation during the application process.
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What changes when you run a region of dental practices
A regional manager in any chain coaches managers, reads the numbers and moves staff around. In dentistry, state law and clinical licenses limit what a non-dentist may decide, and staff who float between offices bring wage and supervision rules with them.
Staff moves may need a dentist's sign-off
In some states, the dentist-owned practice must keep control of more than clinical care. Florida's law bars a non-dentist, or a company not owned by dentists, from controlling decisions on office staff and hours of practice. In states with a rule like this, the regional manager can propose moving a hygienist or changing hours, but the final decision belongs to the dentist-owned practice. Ask the group's lawyer how this works in each state you cover. Source: Florida Statutes 466.0285: Proprietorship by nondentists.
Hygiene without a dentist in the building
When a dentist calls out, can the hygiene schedule go on? The state's supervision rules decide. In Ohio, a hygienist may treat patients while the supervising dentist is away, for up to 15 business days in a row, only under set conditions. Among them, the dentist must have examined the patient within the past year and left written protocols, and the patient must be told ahead of time. Know your state's rules before you move a hygienist to cover. Source: Ohio Revised Code 4715.22: Dental hygienist supervision.
One audit form for every office
Audit scores only compare if every office is checked the same way. CDC publishes an Infection Prevention Checklist for Dental Settings. It says the checklist can be used to check compliance, so it makes a good base for the infection control part of your audit. Add your own lines for HIPAA, cash and schedule templates. Source: CDC: Summary of Infection Prevention Practices in Dental Settings.
Floaters are on the clock between offices
Covering shifts often means a team member works the morning at one office and the afternoon at another. Under federal wage rules, driving between job sites in the middle of the workday is work time. An hourly assistant's trip from one office to the next is paid. Build it into the schedule, and make sure each floater's hours from every office land on one timecard for the week. Source: 29 CFR 785.38: Travel that is all in the day's work.
When an associate dentist leaves
Losing an associate dentist, even for a few weeks, empties chairs fast. The regional manager works with the COO and the Recruiter on cover, rebuilds the schedule template around the dentists who remain, and has the call center offer patients a nearby office. The goal is to keep those patients in the group before the gap shows up as a missed month.
How much dental regional operations managers make
The closest BLS group for dental regional operations managers is general and operations managers. General and operations managers who work for dental offices earned a median of $92,540 a year ($44.49 an hour) in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s below the $105,770 median for general and operations managers in all industries. About 5,580 of the 3,503,020 general and operations managers in that survey work for dental offices.
Salaried, often with a region bonus paid on production, collections and audit scores, and the group covers the daily driving with a mileage rate or a car allowance. The BLS figures cover general and operations managers employed by dental offices, which can take in office-level managers as well as regional ones, so check them against regional postings from other dental groups.
Dental offices
$92,540$92,540 median Middle half $76,620–$133,710 10th–90th $65,000–$179,990
All industries
$105,770$105,770 median Middle half $72,320–$167,280 10th–90th $50,090–$253,390
$0k$50k$100k$150k$200k$250k$300k
10th–90th percentileMiddle halfMedianAnnual pay, May 2025. Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics.
Annual pay by percentile
Group
10th
25th
Median
75th
90th
Dental offices
$65,000
$76,620
$92,540
$133,710
$179,990
All industries
$50,090
$72,320
$105,770
$167,280
$253,390
Skills to hire for, and what you can teach
Hire for these
Has run a dental office that met its production and collections goals
Knows how hygiene recall, unscheduled treatment and insurance write-offs show up in an office's profit and loss
Teaches practice managers to close their own schedule gaps instead of closing them for them
Keeps business calls and clinical calls apart, and knows when to bring in the Clinical Director
Earns the trust of dentists and hygienists who don't report to them
Can audit an office for OSHA, infection control and HIPAA, and explain each finding to its team
Teach these on the job
Your audit form and how each line is scored
The regional reports in your practice management software
Who on your float list can cover which jobs, and in which offices
Your integration checklist for bought practices
The dental practice rules in each state your region covers
The work runs on a multi-location practice management system, such as Dentrix Enterprise or Denticon, for production, schedule and aging reports, plus a dashboard that puts every office side by side. Add the audit form or app, the payroll and timecard system, and reliable transportation for the daily drives.
No targets come filled in. Set them office by office from your own recent months, since a two-dentist office and a five-dentist office won't share a production goal.
Production against plan in the region
Each office's gross production, pulled from your dental software, against the monthly plan set with the CFO. Look at dentist and hygiene production apart, since they fall short for different reasons.
Collections against production in the region
Net collections divided by net production for the same period, office by office, after insurance write-offs. Read the oldest insurance and patient balances next to it, because a strong month can hide a growing backlog.
Practice audit scores
The score from the group's audit form at each visit, by section: infection control, OSHA, HIPAA, cash handling and schedule templates. Also track how many open items from the last audit were fixed by the next one.
Open shifts covered without canceling patients
Count every call-out and open shift in the region, then how many were filled by a float or a moved team member with no patients rescheduled. Log the cancellations that still happened and why.
Practice manager retention
Practice managers who stayed in the job over a rolling year, against those who left. Record the reason for each exit, and look for a pattern by office or by how long they had been in the role.
Does a dental regional operations manager need clinical training?
No. The template's preferred path is the front office or dental assisting, then practice management. What counts more than a degree is knowing how a dental office makes money: hygiene recall, treatment plans patients accept, insurance fees and collections. A good regional manager can talk through a schedule or an insurance estimate with a dentist. They stay out of the treatment itself.
How much does a dental regional operations manager make?
General and operations managers who work for dental offices earned a median of $92,540 a year ($44.49 an hour) in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The middle half earned between $76,620 and $133,710 a year. Pay also depends on your local market, experience and bonus terms.
How many practices should one regional manager oversee?
The template plans for four or five. The right number depends on drive time between offices, how many of the practice managers are new, and whether the region holds a recent purchase. A region with two new managers, or an office in its first year with the group, needs more visits than a settled one, so keep it smaller until those offices steady.
How is a regional operations manager different from a practice manager?
A practice manager runs one office day to day, from the morning huddle to the day sheet. The regional manager coaches several practice managers, compares their numbers, moves staff between offices and audits each one. A problem that stays inside one office belongs to its practice manager. One that spans offices, or keeps coming back, belongs to the regional manager.
What does a dental regional manager check on a practice visit?
A good visit starts at the morning huddle. Then watch check-in and checkout, look at the next few days of the schedule, and go over the recall and unscheduled treatment lists. Walk the sterilization area and the treatment rooms. End with a short written list of fixes the practice manager agrees to, and check those first on the next visit.
Who handles a problem with a dentist in the region?
It depends on the kind of problem. Business issues, such as running late, schedule changes or how a dentist treats the team, the regional manager can raise with the dentist and the practice manager. Clinical concerns, such as treatment plans, charting or a complaint about care, go to the Clinical Director. When a problem has both sides, get both leaders into the same conversation.
