Women Are Building Healthcare Practices, and PE is Ready to Buy Them

There's a quiet revolution happening in healthcare, and it's not coming from a boardroom or a hospital system. It's coming from the women building thriving medical spas, growing dental practices into multi-location groups, and turning veterinary clinics into community institutions. It's happening one practice at a time. And the data is finally catching up to what many of us in the industry already knew.

Women are not just entering healthcare at rapid rates, they're owning it. And for those who have built something valuable, the M&A market and PE investors have never been more interested in what they've created.

In this article, we break down women’s ownership across four healthcare verticals we serve, as well as what PE interest looks like for potential sellers. 

The medical aesthetics industry is a women-owned economy.

Let's start with a striking number: nearly 70% of medical spa owners are women. That's most of the aesthetics market. And it exists within an industry that has grown for 15 consecutive years, expanding from 8,899 locations in 2022 to 10,488 in 2023 alone, generating an average of $1.9 million in annual revenue per practice. The medical aesthetics industry has eclipsed $17 billion in annual revenue, and is still going up. 

Women dominate almost the entire aesthetics economy, and not just as practice owners. They're also the patients (close to 90% of med spa clients are female) and the providers. This is an industry built by women, for women, and private equity has taken notice.

According to PitchBook's Q2 2023 Healthcare Services Report, 2023 marked the highest number of growth deals in aesthetic dermatology ever recorded, with at least eight PE transactions announced, up from just one in 2020. Despite that momentum, more than 90% of med spas remain unaffiliated with private equity, and 80%+ operate as single-unit businesses. 

The dentistry workforce has changed, and ownership is following.

The transformation in dentistry is progressing in real time. According to the ADA's Health Policy Institute, in 2001, only 16% of U.S. dentists were women. By 2024, that number had climbed to nearly 40%, and among dentists under 35, approximately half are now female. The ADA projects that women will comprise half of the entire dental workforce by 2040, and in 2024, dental schools graduated a record number of students, at least half of them women.

Ownership is more complicated, though. Per ADA HPI research, the overall practice ownership rate has declined from 84.7% in 2005 to 72.5% in 2023 as Baby Boomers retire and DSOs continue to grow. Among early-career dentists, women are about 16 percentage points less likely to own a practice than their male counterparts, a gap that narrows to 8 points by late career. ADA research suggests this is largely a delay, not a departure: most dentists eventually do become owners, just later in their careers.

For women in dentistry, that delay has strategic implications, because the consolidation window in dental is wide open right now. Per PitchBook's Q4 2024 Healthcare Services PE Update, PE firms closed 132 dental deals in 2024 alone, the highest count of any healthcare subsector tracked (2025 numbers are coming soon). About one-third of all dental practices are already consolidated, a trend accelerating every year. The women who own practices, or who are building toward ownership, are entering a market that is ready to pay for what they've built.

The optometry pipeline is female, while the profession is catching up.

In 1968, 97.1% of optometrists were men. Today, according to a January 2025 report in Review of Optometry, women represent an estimated 50–53% of the active optometric workforce, up from 40% just over a decade ago.

More telling: per the Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry, 70.6% of the 2023–2024 incoming optometry class is female. The profession's pipeline is overwhelmingly female, which means ownership trends are likely to follow.

From 2017 to 2024, private practice's share of the optometric workforce fell 10 points, from 51% to 41%. PE-backed offices, meanwhile, grew from just 3% to nearly 11% of the profession over the same period. The consolidation of optometry is underway, and it's moving fast.

For women who own optometry practices, or who are approaching ownership, this is important to keep in mind. U.S. optometry practice sales are projected to grow at a 6.08% CAGR through 2028. The window to position a practice for a strong transaction, or to build toward one, is open now. But it may not stay that way forever.

Veterinary medicine: the most dramatic shift in any vertical.

No industry has undergone a more dramatic gender transformation than veterinary medicine. In 1960, 98% of veterinarians in the U.S. were male. By 2023, 67% are female, a near-complete reversal in six decades. The class of 2027 is 83% women. 

And yet, ownership tells a different story. Only about 40% of veterinary practices are owned by women. That gap, between who works in veterinary medicine and who owns it, is one of the more significant disparities in any healthcare vertical today, but we hope it’s not for long. The AVMA has projected that women practice owners will overtake men within the decade.

Meanwhile, private equity is pouring capital into the sector. Per PitchBook data cited by AAHA, PE invested $51.6 billion into veterinary and another $9.3 billion in just the first four months of 2024. And yet, 85% of vet clinics remain independent, meaning the consolidation window is wide open, and most of the sellers in that window will be women.

What the numbers mean for women in healthcare.

The data across these four sectors tells a consistent story: women have built the workforce, and they are building the ownership base. In medical aesthetics, they already dominate. In dental, optometry, and veterinary, the pipeline shows they soon will.

What the data also tells us is that the private equity market, the most sophisticated buyer pool in healthcare history, is actively consolidating all four sectors simultaneously. PE firms are building platforms in all of these spaces.

That means for women who own practices, the question is no longer if there will be a buyer. The question is whether you'll be ready to sell when the moment arrives. That means having the right ownership structure in place, understanding how your practice will be valued, knowing the legal terms that will protect you, and finding advisors who have actually been through the process.

At Marti Law Group, we've represented hundreds of medical practice owners through M&A transactions, from the first conversation about structure to closing day (and beyond). If you're a practice owner in medical aesthetics, dental, optometry, or veterinary medicine and you're thinking about what comes next, we'd love to be part of that conversation. Contact us to connect with our team.