Associateships

[thedentist555]

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Can an experienced or knowledgeable dentist give me their thoughts on this question?

Is it possible for someone to be an associate for their entire career? By "possible" I mean can they do it without having too much difficulty finding and keeping employment?

It seems that most dentists will not hire you unless they think you could potentially buy out their practice when they want to retire.

Personally, I would not mind the fact that my salary has a cap by associating, since I wouldn't have to deal with the headache of running a business and having a half million $ loan over my head....

 

[DrJeff]

Most definately, one can remain an associate throughout an entire career, it just depends on the senior partner/owner of the practice. Some practice owners simply don't want to give up a piece of control of THEIR practice, and also would have a tough time splitting the profits with another dentist. Most practice owners however are interested in findign someone to partner up with for many reasons such as decreased responsibility and the financial gains of the by in process.

I've had a few days where the concept of being a lifetime associate seemed like a great idea, but the added benefits in my mind far outway the lack of responsibility of an associate, even when I had to fire my first employee a couple of months ago. As my partner put it, "you've now got as much responsibilty as I do now, and I fired the last person, so it's your turn now! 🙄 "

Plus, it's nice to get 50% of the total practice profits as opposed just a percentage of my collections 😀

 

[Supernumerary]

I'm not experienced or knowledgeable, but I'm more than willing to share my ignorance. If you just want to practice without the troubles of running a business, there are also careers in the military and public service. These pay reasonably well with good benefits AND a pension plan. 🙂 The dentist just down the street from me is retired from the army (I'd guess he's about 45-50) and he just practices enough to pay for toys and hobbies. He could live to be a hundred and never worry about having at least enough money to live on.

 

[Big_Poppa DDS]

I would probably avoid being an associate, unless you know the practice has enough patients. My experience was terrible - first of all I did research the practice, it seemed like it had enough cash flow to support an associate, the Dr. was not busy but steady the days I visited the office, the staff seemed interested and nice. Right after graduation, I still did not have a lot of confidence, and what made it worse was that I was supposed get all my own patients, a question I should have asked before, but he seemed like he was willing to allow me to see new patients, pedo, and whatever he really didn't want to do and I didn't mind that because it was supposed to be long term and buy out in 2 years. I got a little suspicious when I had only done 1 sealant in 2 weeks!!!!! What a joke, I wasn't even advertised!

I went to an HMO clinic for 6 mos where the dentistry was at best of minimum standard but I got a lot of operative and OS experience and a bit of crown work.

Now I am on my own sharing space with a young dentist who is awesome and everything is going a lot better.

I would recommend everyone do a GPR and then either buy a practice or go on your own. One of the bad things about being Canadian in the US is that financially a GPR was not possible, the pay was just too poor and we are not able to defer loans.