IS SPECIALIZING WORTH IT ANYMORE?

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bucktoothdental

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Just wanted some opinions about specializing. Some say specializing has lost it flare due to all the GPs taking the treatment and not referring. What is the best specialty considering work enjoyment and the very important $? Is it worth spending 1 year in gpr/wasting time working an insignificant corp job just to keep applying if not able to get accepted strait out of school? Thoughts........

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Specialists get very good at their job and make more money doing it (on average). If you consider a dentist and a specialist working for 25 years, the specialist comes out on top in terms of income. I think if someone wants to put in the time and can get into a program then specializing is definitely worth it. Just my opinion of course. Congrats on getting into endo, by the way.
 
Thanks. Endo I believe will be very strong for a long time. Just have to have the correct business capabilities. Seems ortho is the worst speciality out there, however their are some very successful, young orthodontists.
 
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I don't know if specializing is worth it anymore. Talking to some new OMFS grads, it seems its a lot harder to make it then whats sold to you while you're in dental school. But after the first few rocky years its seems that most end up pretty ballin'. Regardless, I got in the business to chop people's faces off and put them back together, so at least I got that going for me.
 
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I don't know if specializing is worth it anymore. Talking to some new OMFS grads, it seems its a lot harder to make it then whats sold to you while you're in dental school. But after the first few rocky years its seems that most end up pretty ballin'. Regardless, I got in the business to chop people's faces off and put them back together, so at least I got that going for me.
Please elaborate a little on this. why is it becoming so much harder to make it now?
 
Please elaborate a little on this. why is it becoming so much harder to make it now?

Sorry, what I wrote sounds confusing. I meant that I personally don't know the answer to whether or not its worth it to specialize, however I personally enjoy the nature of what I do so its worth it to me. Its a fairly useless answer.

If you're wondering about the finances, currently the going rate for a new OMFS grad is 180-220k, plus your bonus, which is a percentage of your production after a defined amount made. This is pretty standard across the country. The variable is when your bonus actually kicks in. For example, one might be given a base of 200k, plus 35% of production for anything collected over 650k. Or it could be 30% after 1 million in collections. The office volume and your personal ability to get referrals going is the variable. The buy in period to a practice is typically at year 2 or 3, with the decision to stay made in the first year. So no, nobody is starting at half a million (I actually used to think that in dental school). But there is plenty of money to be made, I think it would be reasonable to expect 350k-650k on average for OMFS after 5-10 years in, the main variables being location and your own ability to market yourself.

So is it worth it? You'll be able to pay off your student loans, buy nice things and retire at a reasonable age. But far more important than money is to love what you've chosen to specialize in, because theres pretty much no going back once you're in that deep.
 
Specialists rely on the referrals from the GPs. Your business success depends on well you communicate with your referring GPs. Going from door to door to beg the GPs to refer patients to you is a must. If you can’t do this, then don’t specialize. What’s the point of spending extra 2-6 years after dental school to do what you love but you have no patients to work on?
 
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If you want to be good at something, yes. If you are just trying to make more money, no. The GPs are eating up everything. The sad thing is that in a few years there won't be any good specialists.
 
If you want to be good at something, yes. If you are just trying to make more money, no. The GPs are eating up everything. The sad thing is that in a few years there won't be any good specialists.

curious comment...could you elaborate?
 
I'll field this one. The more procedures that GP's perform that are traditionally bread and butter for a specialist, the more a specialist is forced to hustle for business. The new model for virtually all specialties is to hustle for a corporate dental office. You can't afford the luxury of complex and interesting hobby procedures/cases because 1. they never reimburse well and 2. you're too busy hustling for those bread and butter cases just to pay off your loans. The more invisalign/wisdom teeth/molar endo/implants that GP's do, the harder specialists have to focus on competing with them for the same procedure since those are what pays the bills for us. I'll use oral surgeons as an example. How can an OMFS take the time to do orthognathic/trauma cases (pathetically low reimbursement) when they don't have that steady stream of 3rd molars/implants coming in the door to pay the bills? So you end up hustling for a corporation. Its the slow degradation of the dental profession, and corporations are majorly to blame.

Yep and while you are hustling for corporations in offices that you are only in a couple days a month (can't get comfortable) you really aren't doing your best work, just trying to get by. The GPs then turn around and blame you for not doing good work, so why not let them do it anyway they say. Dentists and Specialists hone their skills working in environments that are supportive of their abilities.
 
Specialize in a field that can market directly to public - pedo or ortho. Then approach it like a business and focus on marketing, branding, and profitability. Ditch the referral mindset because dentists are fickle with their referrals (I'm fickle and political with my 3rd molar referrals, and I know dentists are the same with their referrals to me, so I refuse to count on them). If corporate dentistry continues its steady march on, referrals will eventually become non-existent for most private practice specialists. Be super charismatic and business savvy and join a study club where you can cut your learning curve in half, and you just might make it.
 
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Asking for the best specialty is like asking for someone's favorite color. The best specialty is a product of your own preference. :)
 
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