Hi guys - does anyone have any idea about working with Dental dreams? Is it a nice place to work at? Any idea how much the dentists make in locations such as Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston.
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Dental dreams
- Thread starter ShaunT
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They came and talked to us for a lunch and learn this week. It seems like they really take advantage of the "you need experience to get a job, you need a job to get experience". They are not shy about telling us that you will most new dentists work for them for 2-3 and then go off on your own. They told us they pay 30% of production but if you don't produce, they will take away from your 30%. They told me that dentists will make 230k/year but I feel like those numbers could be made up. The say that they take mostly Medicaid. Also they don't have hygienist.
Their presentation was not very well organized. They basically stood in front of everyone and asked "who has questions" so I don't think I got as much info as I would if they handed out a lecture or something like that.
Their presentation was not very well organized. They basically stood in front of everyone and asked "who has questions" so I don't think I got as much info as I would if they handed out a lecture or something like that.
Yes I contacted a few people who work there after posting this message and I heard horror stories. None of them make close to the amount that they promise and never get the minimum guarantee that was promised. It seems that they are hiring too many dentists per clinic and no one gets to see too many patients to make money but still have to work in the clinic for over 10 hours daily even if one has to sit idle for sometime in between.
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Yeah those horror stories kinda confirm what I already suspected about dental dreams. Thank you for contacting people
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Here's my experience....don't do it...run...run as far away as you can. I worked for this company for four months and would advise all dentists to stay away from this company. For those new grads looking for a chance to make money right out of the gate it's still not worth it. Yes, it seems very enticing to make $230,000+/year (as advertised) but believe me you are going to work your a** off for every penny of that paycheck.
Honestly, let me break it down for you if you are seriously considering this place.
1.) Your quality of dentistry will decline.
As a corporate mill you will be working tirelessly with little or no break. The number of patients booked per day can exceed 60+ and if you're working in a 4 doc practice you'll probably be in an office where there are no less than 80 patients booked, meaning that you will see 20 patients if everyone shows, no less than 12-15 if there are some no shows. You won't have EFDAs or Hygienists also helping you out as you may have had in dental school or the practice that you used to work for. So, when you see a patient you're doing x-rays (done by assistants who are poorly trained most times), exam, prophy and potentially major work (fillings, extractions mostly) on the first visit within 30-40 mins out of two chairs (one for new patients another for ongoing treatment). Dental Dreams has a catch-phrase that they like to throw around: "Same day treatment". This means you do as much treatment as you possibly can on a patient within that scheduled visit. So for example, if a patient needs 11 fillings, 3 extractions, and requires a prophy, you do the prophy, maybe like 4-5 fillings and extractions within 30-40 min time frame. This isn't an exaggeration.. And if you couldn't do that, then they would pull you into the office and literally keep talking production and would say "honestly we aren't supposed to talk production with you but you need to do more in such n' such time frame to make money....and don't you like money?" Well yeah we all like money and we all want to serve our patients but do we want to do this at the cost of doing the work improperly? At the cost of not performing our jobs to the best ethics and standards of care? When I literally quoted ADA standards of care and codes of ethics they called me "by the book" and "this isn't private practice" and "well, try to find shortcuts around these roadblocks." I even had the clinical director state these exact words to me: "You can either drive the boat real slow and not make much...basically as much as you would make a day working at Burger King...or you could drive the boat real hard, piss a few people off, and make a lot of money."
2.) Over treat patients or under treat patients...period.
The clinical director said to me, "I place a post and core in EVERY tooth that I do endo on." When bringing up the clinical indications of using a post and core he dismissed my comments.
You have to submit pre-authorizations for procedures (look this up new grads...this is going to be what you're dealing with 90% of the time in medicaid) and if a procedure comes back from medicaid denied, well guess what...you can't do the procedure, unless patient pays for that $400 crown out of pocket. If no crown or endo/crown then patient says, "Pull it." which that only costs 60 bucks for either simple/surgical ext.
If a patient has a PPO...do as many fillings as you possibly can do that day to make a killing of them because medicaid reimbursements are so low to begin with. Also sealants...no caries control? no problem...seal all the teeth today and bring in those kids next appointment and drill the same teeth that had sealants on them from last appointment (which this is fraud...but this happened to be what the office manager told me to do...which no I didn't do this).
Small incipient lesions that aren't even 1/2 into the enamel are deemed necessary to restore. I can't tell you how many times I had the clinical director get on me for marking incipient lesions and then saying that I should restore these lesions with two surface resins. (Then he made a comment to me right before I left, "I don't think you can diagnose." Well sorry to disappoint you but the National Board examiners and the CDCA seem to think that I can and I have proven it in school too by graduating from an accredited dental school.)
3.) They engage in fraud.
two instances I can think of:
the one aforementioned with sealants and the other was when my office manager found out that valplast partials were worth more for production purposes than non-precious metal partials so she had us plan every patient with valplast partials initially, which contrary to her demands I planned every patient as they should be planned, based on need and desire of each individual.
Also, in order to make my production higher, my office manager offered to diagnose carious lesions on x-rays for me when I wasn't present in the office to make my production higher. I simply replied, "No."
4.) Scheduling is a mess.
There is no regard for when patients come for an appointment. A patient could be 3 hours late and they would still seat them which would lead to them complaining and ultimately your a** being chewed out at weekly and monthly meetings. 10 minutes to closing and they would still be registering new patients who would need ER treatments - mostly extractions or fillings fell out from another dental dreams practice in the area.
Other Notes:
They pay you on 30% production minus a percentage of lab fees but when your paycheck comes in and you don't expect the number you should see they start talking collections and how if affects your paycheck which makes no sense because production and collections are totally different things. If you produce X amount you should get a 30% of X less percent lab fees. There should be no mention of collections, that's on the owners. I was actually asked to bring my own endo files! Staff are very rude and unprofessional cursing and talking about inappropriate things around patients. There was also a ton of back biting and rumors spread around about each doctor among assistants. The office manager herself would be one of these people who would engage in such acts. There is no PTO and no per diem basis (even though they say there is). Health insurance given through them is super expensive and no dental, no 401k no extra fringe benefits. They have vision insurance which is good and life as well. No malpractice payback. Also here's a big one, you can't take off from work for 6 months and get ready to work every other Saturday seeing 20 patients in 4 hours. I think once I saw something like 40 patients during a weekday. Equipment (at the office I worked at) was terrible, always breaking or malfunctioning. Your hours are variable even though they say you work from 10a-6p you may get out of work at 7:30/8p. There is no praise for your work, only more demands. The owner herself doesn't practice anymore and the clinical directors probably don't either at this point. It's run by business people, not dentists.
Honestly, let me break it down for you if you are seriously considering this place.
1.) Your quality of dentistry will decline.
As a corporate mill you will be working tirelessly with little or no break. The number of patients booked per day can exceed 60+ and if you're working in a 4 doc practice you'll probably be in an office where there are no less than 80 patients booked, meaning that you will see 20 patients if everyone shows, no less than 12-15 if there are some no shows. You won't have EFDAs or Hygienists also helping you out as you may have had in dental school or the practice that you used to work for. So, when you see a patient you're doing x-rays (done by assistants who are poorly trained most times), exam, prophy and potentially major work (fillings, extractions mostly) on the first visit within 30-40 mins out of two chairs (one for new patients another for ongoing treatment). Dental Dreams has a catch-phrase that they like to throw around: "Same day treatment". This means you do as much treatment as you possibly can on a patient within that scheduled visit. So for example, if a patient needs 11 fillings, 3 extractions, and requires a prophy, you do the prophy, maybe like 4-5 fillings and extractions within 30-40 min time frame. This isn't an exaggeration.. And if you couldn't do that, then they would pull you into the office and literally keep talking production and would say "honestly we aren't supposed to talk production with you but you need to do more in such n' such time frame to make money....and don't you like money?" Well yeah we all like money and we all want to serve our patients but do we want to do this at the cost of doing the work improperly? At the cost of not performing our jobs to the best ethics and standards of care? When I literally quoted ADA standards of care and codes of ethics they called me "by the book" and "this isn't private practice" and "well, try to find shortcuts around these roadblocks." I even had the clinical director state these exact words to me: "You can either drive the boat real slow and not make much...basically as much as you would make a day working at Burger King...or you could drive the boat real hard, piss a few people off, and make a lot of money."
2.) Over treat patients or under treat patients...period.
The clinical director said to me, "I place a post and core in EVERY tooth that I do endo on." When bringing up the clinical indications of using a post and core he dismissed my comments.
You have to submit pre-authorizations for procedures (look this up new grads...this is going to be what you're dealing with 90% of the time in medicaid) and if a procedure comes back from medicaid denied, well guess what...you can't do the procedure, unless patient pays for that $400 crown out of pocket. If no crown or endo/crown then patient says, "Pull it." which that only costs 60 bucks for either simple/surgical ext.
If a patient has a PPO...do as many fillings as you possibly can do that day to make a killing of them because medicaid reimbursements are so low to begin with. Also sealants...no caries control? no problem...seal all the teeth today and bring in those kids next appointment and drill the same teeth that had sealants on them from last appointment (which this is fraud...but this happened to be what the office manager told me to do...which no I didn't do this).
Small incipient lesions that aren't even 1/2 into the enamel are deemed necessary to restore. I can't tell you how many times I had the clinical director get on me for marking incipient lesions and then saying that I should restore these lesions with two surface resins. (Then he made a comment to me right before I left, "I don't think you can diagnose." Well sorry to disappoint you but the National Board examiners and the CDCA seem to think that I can and I have proven it in school too by graduating from an accredited dental school.)
3.) They engage in fraud.
two instances I can think of:
the one aforementioned with sealants and the other was when my office manager found out that valplast partials were worth more for production purposes than non-precious metal partials so she had us plan every patient with valplast partials initially, which contrary to her demands I planned every patient as they should be planned, based on need and desire of each individual.
Also, in order to make my production higher, my office manager offered to diagnose carious lesions on x-rays for me when I wasn't present in the office to make my production higher. I simply replied, "No."
4.) Scheduling is a mess.
There is no regard for when patients come for an appointment. A patient could be 3 hours late and they would still seat them which would lead to them complaining and ultimately your a** being chewed out at weekly and monthly meetings. 10 minutes to closing and they would still be registering new patients who would need ER treatments - mostly extractions or fillings fell out from another dental dreams practice in the area.
Other Notes:
They pay you on 30% production minus a percentage of lab fees but when your paycheck comes in and you don't expect the number you should see they start talking collections and how if affects your paycheck which makes no sense because production and collections are totally different things. If you produce X amount you should get a 30% of X less percent lab fees. There should be no mention of collections, that's on the owners. I was actually asked to bring my own endo files! Staff are very rude and unprofessional cursing and talking about inappropriate things around patients. There was also a ton of back biting and rumors spread around about each doctor among assistants. The office manager herself would be one of these people who would engage in such acts. There is no PTO and no per diem basis (even though they say there is). Health insurance given through them is super expensive and no dental, no 401k no extra fringe benefits. They have vision insurance which is good and life as well. No malpractice payback. Also here's a big one, you can't take off from work for 6 months and get ready to work every other Saturday seeing 20 patients in 4 hours. I think once I saw something like 40 patients during a weekday. Equipment (at the office I worked at) was terrible, always breaking or malfunctioning. Your hours are variable even though they say you work from 10a-6p you may get out of work at 7:30/8p. There is no praise for your work, only more demands. The owner herself doesn't practice anymore and the clinical directors probably don't either at this point. It's run by business people, not dentists.
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- Joined
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Ever considered taking legal action or informing a dental board about these things? Genuinely curious.
I have but I figure that I don't really have the time nor the money to be tied into a lengthy legal battle with these guys. Plus, the owner's husband is a lawyer so I'm sure there's plenty of loop holes that he knows of. If you google search legal litigation against this company there are few examples. One of which there was a case in Illinois where one of their dentists killed a teenager after performing RCT on him. Another one of a person injured/killed was in New Mexico. Here are a few examples:
http://blog.dentistthemenace.com/2010/06/dental-dreams-lawsuit.html
http://blog.dentistthemenace.com/2011/02/dental-dreams-has-become-dental.html
Honestly, not worried. Places like these always get what's coming to them.
Everyone has heard about this company. Note: there has never been positive feedback. They like to recruit new grads and foreigners who don't know better. The only way companies like this can die if dentists stop working for them.
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