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What Is Open Dental Clinics and Is It Right for Your DSO
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Ezra Angelo
- • May 20, 2026
Open Dental’s Clinics feature is the built-in multi-location module that lets dental groups and DSOs run multiple offices on a single shared database. It is not a separate product. It is a configuration option within standard Open Dental that activates once you enable it.
For DSOs evaluating Open Dental as a platform, understanding how Clinics works is essential to determining whether it fits your organization’s structure.
per month
Open Dental at $199 per location per month is among the lowest cost enterprise-capable dental PMS options available.
DSOs that choose platforms like Dentrix Enterprise or Denticon often pay significantly more per location. For growing groups where cost per location matters at scale, Open Dental Clinics is worth a serious evaluation.
What the Clinics Feature Actually Does
Shared patient records across all locations
A patient who visits two locations has one record. No duplicate charts, no duplicate billing errors for patients who use multiple offices.
Per-location and rolled-up financial reporting
Financial reports run per location or across the entire organization. Production, collections, and provider reports visible at any level.
Provider records separated by location
A provider who works across locations is visible at both. Scheduling and records stay separated by location without requiring separate accounts or databases.
Single shared database, not separate instances
All locations connect to one central database. Without Clinics enabled, each office would need a separate database with no way to share patient or provider records across locations.
This is the core functionality that makes Open Dental viable for multi-location groups. Without it, each office would need a separate database with no way to share patient or provider records across locations. The Clinics feature is what transforms a single-practice tool into a DSO platform.
What Open Dental Clinics Is Good At
Open Dental Clinics works well for DSOs that need:
Shared patient records: one patient record accessible from any location
Eliminates duplicate charts and billing errors for patients who visit multiple offices. A single record travels with the patient regardless of which location they visit, reducing the administrative overhead that comes from managing duplicate accounts.
Per-location financial reporting viewable at any level of the organization
Production, collections, and provider reports that can be viewed by individual location or rolled up across the entire organization. No third-party tool required for basic multi-location financial visibility at the location and group level.
Provider mobility: providers tracked and scheduled per location without separate accounts
Providers who work across locations are tracked and scheduled per location without requiring separate accounts or databases. Clinical and production records stay accurate regardless of which location the provider works at on a given day.
What Open Dental Clinics Does Not Do
Not a cloud platform: every location must maintain reliable connectivity to the central server
Open Dental Clinics runs on a server that all locations connect to. That means your IT infrastructure must support reliable connectivity between every location and the central server. High-latency or unreliable connections cause performance problems that look like software issues but are actually network problems. For geographically dispersed groups, this is the primary IT challenge to solve before deploying Clinics.
No built-in enterprise analytics dashboards comparable to Denticon or CareStack
Open Dental does not offer the executive-level analytics dashboards that dedicated enterprise platforms provide. Groups that need sophisticated cross-location analytics typically rely on third-party integrations like Dental Intelligence or similar tools to supplement Open Dental’s native reporting. This is a known trade-off for the lower cost per location.
IT Infrastructure Requirements for Open Dental Clinics
Check each infrastructure requirement your organization currently has in place or has a confirmed plan to address before deploying Open Dental Clinics.
Is Open Dental Clinics Right for Your DSO?
Have two to ten locations and want a proven, cost-effective platform
Want full data ownership with no vendor lock-in
Have standardized on Open Dental at individual locations and want to consolidate into a shared database as the group grows
Have the IT infrastructure or a partner to build it properly before deployment
Sophisticated enterprise analytics comparable to dedicated DSO platforms
A fully cloud-based deployment with no server dependency
Turnkey onboarding support at the speed that dedicated enterprise platforms provide
Large-scale multi-state operations where network complexity becomes the primary challenge
Frequently Asked Questions
Ekim IT Solutions works exclusively with dental practices. We serve New England and New York with on-site support and dental practices nationwide with remote support. As a certified Open Dental vendor partner, we configure and manage the server infrastructure, network architecture, and multi-location setup that Open Dental Clinics requires to run reliably across your DSO.
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- • May 20, 2026
