Navigating Dental Practice Pressures in 2026
Key themes and pressures affecting practices today and what to do about it.
What's in the Report?
The 2026 Dental Practice Review combines a survey of Australian dental practice owners and managers, two national practice-technology surveys, and independent data from AIHW, ABS, Ahpra, Jobs and Skills Australia, Services Australia and OAIC.
It’s the first edition of an annual report. From next year, it will give you a consistent baseline to see how the forces shaping your practice are shifting.
Use these findings to benchmark your practice and sharpen your priorities. The report covers:
- Why performance is diverging, and why workforce capacity matters more than the economy.
- The affordability gap and what it means for patient access.
- Strategic posture and confidence: where practices sit and how it shapes their decisions.
- Why online discovery isn't necessarily converting into online bookings.
- Recall and reactivation: the gap between a great patient experience and returning patients.
- AI, technology and trust: where practices are investing, and why security concerns are well founded.
For more than 34 years, Centaur Software has worked with Australian dental practices. In that time, we’ve seen the sector through changes in technology, regulation, workforce and patient expectations, and we’ve seen what it takes to keep a practice running well through them.
That experience shapes how we research the sector. We know which questions matter to practice owners and managers, and we know how to tell a real pattern from a passing headline.
Grounded in evidence, not opinion. The 2026 Dental Practice Review draws on three layers of evidence: a survey of Australian dental practice owners, principals, managers and clinicians; two practice-technology surveys with 655 responses between them; and independent data from AIHW, ABS, Ahpra, Jobs and Skills Australia, Services Australia and OAIC.
Insights at a Glance
The picture is uneven, with clear gaps between how practices perform, what they intend, and what happens day to day. These four points show where those gaps sit. The full report explains what’s behind them and what practices can do about it.
47% of practices improved, while 53% were steady or declined.
72% Practices are confident in their patient experience, but only 45% are confident in bringing patients back.
AI interest is genuine, but adoption is early and cautious (2/4).
Workflow is the leading improvement request (34%); patient communication is the top daily friction (39%).
About this Research
This report draws on three evidence layers that are integrated throughout rather than treated as equivalent or mathematically pooled.
- A Primary Industry Survey of Australian dental practice owners, principals, managers and clinicians: 87 raw responses, with valid question-level samples ranging from 65 to 87. Most respondents represented private practices, so findings describe this cohort rather than larger enterprise organisations.
- Two supplementary practice-technology surveys: 310 responses from 303 Australian practices in Supplementary A, and 345 responses from 338 Australian practices in Supplementary B. These are used selectively for workflow, capability, implementation and future-priority evidence, not as national prevalence estimates.
- Publicly available Australian government and regulator evidence, principally from AIHW, ABS, Ahpra, Jobs and Skills Australia, Services Australia and OAIC, selected through the Australian Dentistry Data Catalogue and used to establish objective market context.
Centaur Software declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Know Where your
Practice Stands
Every practice faces its own mix of pressures. The 2026 Dental Practice Review gives you a clear, evidence-based look at what’s shaping the sector, so you can see where your practice fits and decide where to focus next. It’s the first edition of an annual review, so it also gives you a baseline to track from year to year.