How we build the record

Each category below is a source for our database. All are published by a public agency, except licensed commercial data, which we use only where our license permits aggregate publication. "Published" is how often the publisher releases the data. "Checked" is how often we pull it into the database.

• Aggregates only in public. No public page names a practice, a dentist or an NPI.
• Small numbers are suppressed. We do not publish a share for a county with fewer than 10 practice locations, because a single practice could be identified from it.
• Transition signals are regional. The Dental Transition Index is published for regions and the state, never below that.
• Sponsorship is separate. Sponsored content is labeled, set apart, and never placed between a chart and its source line. Sponsors do not see findings before publication.
• Revisions are logged. Any change to a published figure is recorded in the corrections log with what changed and why.

Anthury Montane, Founder, signs off every published figure, owns the corrections log and answers questions about any number. Every signal used in an index is reviewed by a person before it counts. Questions go to research@ddsintel.com.

The daily briefing summarizes up to ten news items a day that matter to the business of dental practices, sorted for seven audiences: practice brokers, IT and managed service providers, accountants, attorneys, contractors, equipment reps and dental labs. On a quiet day it carries fewer than ten. It never fills space.

• Sources. We read feeds and data services published by public agencies, such as federal device recall and clearance data, the Federal Register, securities filings, security advisories and state rulemaking notices. We add a trade publication only when its terms allow a headline, a link and our own summary. Our crawler identifies itself as DDSIntel-bot and follows each site's robots rules.
• Selection. Each morning a language model classifies new items by audience, geography and news value. Items about the states where we track practices rank first, then federal items that apply to practices there. Clinical research, consumer advice, and any item about one dentist's discipline, license or lawsuit are excluded.
• Writing. A language model (Anthropic's Claude) writes each article only from the text of the source we fetched and, for federal device recalls, figures we fetch from the FDA at the same time, such as the recall's risk class and recent recall counts. It never writes from its own knowledge and must quote the passage behind every claim. A full article opens with the answer and its key number, then gives key facts, questions with short answers, what the item means for each audience, frequently asked questions and every source. When a source is too thin for a full article we publish a short brief, which search engines are asked not to index.
• Checks in code. Before anything is published, software confirms that every quote appears word for word in the source, that every number, date and name in the article appears in a quote, that no quote from a publisher's text runs longer than 25 words or covers more than a tenth of the source (U.S. government records are not under copyright, so those two limits do not apply to them), that headlines and summaries are complete sentences, that a full article has all its sections at the required length, and that no individual dentist or single independent practice is named. An item that fails twice is dropped and the reason is logged.
• Review. Items that pass every check publish automatically. DDSIntel editors review the briefing and can correct, rewrite or withdraw any item. Each item is signed by DDSIntel Editorial and labeled "AI-assisted, reviewed by DDSIntel Editorial".
• Credit and corrections. Every item names its publisher, links to the original and gives the original's date. Summaries are our own words; quotations are short. Changes to a published item are recorded in the corrections log.

• Self-reported registry data. Providers maintain their own federal registry records; changes reach public files only on the next weekly or monthly release.¹
• Licensing addresses are not always practice addresses. A license record can carry a mailing address. We match each license to a practice location before counting it.
• Seasonality in filings. Annual-report and license-renewal deadlines move officer and license-status changes into predictable months.
• DSO affiliation is a floor. Where state law limits practice ownership by non-dentists, DSOs usually work through management agreements with dentist-owned entities. Agreements that are not filed publicly cannot be seen.
• Hours come partly from licensed data. Saturday access depends on posted hours, which practices do not always keep current. Owners can confirm their hours in the owner area.
• Population denominators lag. Five-year estimates trail fast-growing counties; the state's own estimates can differ.⁴