If your dental practice buys through McKesson or Medline, you are almost certainly buying through a medical distributor that treats dental as an adjacent category. That is fine for gloves and gowns. It is a poor fit for most of what a dental practice actually consumes, and it is the reason practices in this position usually find the most savings when they look.
There is also a timing reason to look right now.
Why practices end up on a medical distributor
TGP membership · $89/mo. Members average $1,500+/mo in dental supply savings.
Rarely by choice. The common paths:
- Multi-specialty or hospital-affiliated setting where the medical distributor was already the contracted supplier.
- DSO or group procurement that standardized on a medical distributor for enterprise terms.
- Long-term care or mobile dentistry, where the medical distributor genuinely does serve most of the need.
- PPE during 2020–2021, when medical distributors had allocation and dental distributors did not, and the relationship simply persisted.
None of these are mistakes. They just tend to outlive the reason they started.
What is happening at McKesson
Worth knowing before you renew anything.
McKesson announced in May 2025 that it intends to separate its Medical-Surgical Solutions segment into an independent company. That is the segment containing the medical-surgical and extended-care distribution business dental practices buy through. In April 2026, Apollo agreed to acquire an approximately 13% minority interest in that segment for about $1.25 billion, valuing it near $13 billion.
McKesson has also been shedding geography — it completed its exit from European operations with the sale of its Norwegian business in January 2026, after divesting Canadian retail in December 2024.
For a dental customer, none of this is alarming, but it is all relevant. A segment being carved out for independence typically gets sharper about which customer segments it wants. Dental has never been the priority inside that portfolio, and it is unlikely to become one. If you are signing a multi-year commitment, ask directly how dental is being treated in the separation.
Where medical distributors genuinely compete
Being fair about the overlap, because it is real in specific categories.
PPE and apparel. Gloves, masks, gowns, face shields. Medical distributors buy these in volumes no dental distributor approaches, and they are often competitive or better.
General disposables. Gauze, cotton products, basic wound care.
OTC pharmaceuticals. Broader and often cheaper than dental channels.
Facility and janitorial supply. Not clinical, but it is on your P&L.
If your spend is genuinely concentrated in those four, a medical distributor is a defensible primary and you should keep it.
Where they do not
The dental clinical catalog. This is not a pricing argument, it is an availability one.
Across 148,952 dental products with live, generally available pricing from 39 distributors in the TGP catalog, the categories a dental practice spends most of its clinical budget on are dental-channel products:
| Category | Products in catalog |
|---|---|
| Diamond Burs | 11,393 |
| Carbide Burs | 5,648 |
| Scalers & Curettes | 5,792 |
| Composite Resins | 5,619 |
| Denture & Acrylic Materials | 5,094 |
| CAD/CAM Milling Materials | 4,181 |
| Hand Files | 3,438 |
| Archwires | 3,334 |
| Surgical Hand Instruments | 3,472 |
| Instrument Cassettes & Organization | 3,150 |
| Restorative Hand Instruments | 3,137 |
A medical distributor's dental offering does not meaningfully cover this. Practices buying through one typically end up with a split they never planned: PPE and disposables on the medical account, and everything clinical on a dental account or direct from manufacturers, with nobody looking at the whole picture.
The other half of the problem is that only 31.5% of dental products are available from more than one distributor at all, and the locked categories are almost entirely dental-channel:
| Category | Available from 2+ distributors |
|---|---|
| Implant Fixtures & Abutments | 1.4% |
| Sterilizer & Autoclave Parts | 2.4% |
| Archwires | 3.9% |
| Orthodontic Brackets | 8.5% |
No medical distributor is going to source these. See Switching Dental Distributors: What Is Actually Portable.
The alternatives, by what you need
If you need a full-service dental primary
Henry Schein, Patterson or Benco. Full catalog, field support, equipment sales with in-house service technicians. This is the like-for-like replacement for a medical distributor that was acting as your primary. See Henry Schein Alternatives and Benco vs Patterson.
If you are in a regional footprint
Atlanta Dental Supply (founded 1868, employee-owned, Southeast), Amtouch Dental Supply (founded 1991, west coast, authorized for 3M, Kerr and P&G), or Midwest Dental Equipment & Supply (founded 1988, Texas and Oklahoma, showrooms in four cities).
These are frequently the best fit for a practice coming off a medical distributor, because the complaint is usually the same — being a small account inside a very large company. All three are full-service with equipment capability, all three are independent, and all three make large catalogs available through TGP by live API: Atlanta Dental at 80,200 distinct products, Amtouch at 42,371, Midwest at 39,499. More in Regional Dental Distributors.
If you only need consumables
Darby Dental Supply (mail-order since 1948), Dental City, or Net32 for marketplace price discovery. No equipment service, lower cost to serve. See What Is Net32, and Is It Legit?.
If you are keeping the medical distributor
Often the right call, especially in long-term care, mobile dentistry or multi-specialty settings. Keep it for PPE, disposables and OTC, and add a dental distributor for the clinical catalog. Do not try to force the clinical catalog through a medical account.
What to do about Medline
The same analysis applies with one difference: Medline is privately held and vertically integrated, manufacturing a large share of what it sells. That makes it genuinely strong in gloves, gowns, kits and other manufactured commodity items, and it does not change the conclusion on the dental clinical catalog, which Medline does not deeply carry.
A practical sequence
- Pull twelve months of lines from the medical account and split them: PPE and disposables versus dental clinical.
- If the clinical share is meaningful, you need a dental distributor. That is an availability conclusion, not a price one.
- Keep the medical account for the commodity half if its terms are good. Two accounts split by category is a normal, efficient end state.
- Ask about the separation before you renew. With the Medical-Surgical segment being carved out, a multi-year commitment deserves a direct question about how dental is being handled.
- Compare on manufacturer part number across both accounts. Cross-channel comparisons are where pack-size mismatches do the most damage.
- Consider a GPO for the dental side if you would rather not run this comparison yourself. That is what group purchasing does: it negotiates the competitive portion of the dental catalog and leaves you a single ordering workflow.
Frequently asked questions
Is McKesson good for dental practices?
McKesson is competitive in PPE, disposables and OTC pharmaceuticals, where its medical volume is an advantage. It does not carry the dental clinical catalog with the depth a practice needs — burs, composites, cements, endo, lab and orthodontic materials are dental-channel products. Most dental practices on McKesson end up needing a dental distributor in addition.
Is McKesson selling its dental business?
Not selling it outright, but it is separating the segment that contains it. McKesson announced in 2025 its intent to separate Medical-Surgical Solutions into an independent company, and in April 2026 Apollo agreed to take an approximately 13% stake in that segment at a valuation near $13 billion. Ask how dental is being handled before signing a multi-year agreement.
What are the best alternatives to Medline for a dental practice?
For the clinical catalog, a dental distributor: Henry Schein, Patterson or Benco nationally, or a regional independent such as Atlanta Dental, Amtouch or Midwest Dental Equipment & Supply. For the commodity PPE and disposables where Medline is strongest, you may be better keeping it and splitting the account by category.
Can I use a medical distributor and a dental distributor at the same time?
Yes, and for many practices it is the best configuration. Split by category: PPE, disposables and OTC on the medical account, clinical dental on the dental account. The cost is administrative rather than contractual — two portals and two invoice streams.
When should a dental practice switch away from a medical distributor?
When the clinical share of spend is large enough that you are already buying dental products somewhere else, or filling gaps direct from manufacturers, without anyone comparing the whole picture. That split usually develops quietly. Pull a year of invoice lines and tag them by category; the answer is normally obvious once it is on one page.
Availability and catalog figures as of September 2026, from the TGP catalog: 148,952 products with active, generally available distributor pricing across 39 distributors. Per-distributor product counts reflect catalog breadth made available through the TGP platform. Member-specific pricing was excluded and no prices are disclosed. Company facts are cited to public sources.