I'm really curious to know, you seem like a very accomplished general dentist. At least it sounded like you were general. Would you recommend someone to specialize? Particularly OS. Is the ROI worth it? There are intangibles to this that I just really enjoy but at the end of the day the money is important
Do you know of any resources to read about people owning as a specialist vs owning as a GP?
Owning as a specialist means keeping the GP very happy. I was referring out to one specialist fairly often, until she started getting greedy and very critical (I should be sending her more cases, why didn’t I send her this case or that case). Guess what? She lost all my referrals because I started sending all those patients to someone else. The new specialist was very happy to take on the caseload and didn’t give me a hard time. Offered to come to my office and teach me things and had an open door policy for me to come to their office to learn. She took excellent care of the patients and they were coming back to me happy. This made me look good.
Years of Experience: 10 years total, 4 years endo
Solid mic drop haha
This is what I'm hoping for after endo residency! Nice work!
At this point, how many RCTs are you averaging per day for that take home amount? Small staff and slower pace is what I'm looking forward to the most with endo vs GP.
Typically 5 treats a day with 5-7 consults sprinkled in. Collect about 100k/month running 40%ish overhead.
That's amazing. Thanks for the reply!
are you an owner and out of network?
Owner and mostly OON. As a comparison (since I see you're an endo associate), when I was an associate and in network with multiple insurances I took home about 250k at 4 days/week.
As a gp or specialist?
Specialist
If you are OON, does that mean you won't get reimbursed by insurance/don't accept insurance? Is your practice a FFS model? Sorry, still new to understanding the business aspect of dentistry.
If you don't mind me asking, what were your grades like in dental school? I heard endo is really competitive to get into. Is it harder to get into residency because you are 4 years removed from dental school?
Our school was P/F, so I was a little worried how that would play out when applying. If anything, for endo, it made it easier to get in after practicing for a few years. Many endo residencies like applicants with experience. I'm assuming that helped me with not having a class rank. Endo seems to be competitive to get into, so I'm pretty grateful that I lucked out and got in!
20k a month is a healthy number. If you are paid less and you have good skills leave and find another better job. Present this number clearly to any future employer; if they don't like it or if they reject your application, you saved yourself from a poor job. DSOs and private practices aim is to work you out and pay you as less as possible. If all dentists reject such trash offers, they will have to increase their salaries and show more respect and appreciation to the doctors. Good luck!
^ The truth right there. We do it to ourselves.
As long as you can find an office that provides you enough patients to produce for the owner at least 3 times the amount (ie $60k/month or $3k/day) consistently, then getting paid $20k a month is a reasonable offer…..that’s 33% of the production. If you can’t produce that much (either because you don’t have enough experience or because the office is in a competitive area and doesn’t have enough patients), then you shouldn’t accuse the owner of being greedy.
Looks like you are an owner! If the owner does not have enough patients then he/she probably do not need an associate; and if you read my post again, you will see I talked about skills. Dental community needs to work together to prevent underpayment/disrespect to dentists not the other way around.
I would add, once you are well-established, be careful with where you work and what offers you accept. HR is trained on negotiating and lowering your base and % as much as possible and will always try to make you doubt yourself such as by saying "there are other candidates...etc". Reality is they need a good doctor who can make the clinic successful. Work with your local dental community/chapter and work with your GP colleagues as a community and not as rivals because that what HR wants in order to kill your salary.
Obvious goal. How would you accomplish this? In a saturated city with tons of dentists?
I am both an owner and an associate. I have my own practice. Since I am in a competitive area and my practice doesn’t have enough patients to keep me busy full time, I have to work part time for corp office to supplement my income. Being an owner myself, I can sympathize with the owners who have to deal with the headaches of running a practice everyday: overhead, rents, taxes, bills, permits, labor law, insurances, lazy unmotivated employees etc. As an employee, I want my employer to be successful so I can keep my job…so they won’t cut my days….so I can continue to earn my bonuses.
This country is way too big to be saturated with dentists. Good luck!
There you go everyone! you want to give your colleagues who had same training as you fillings and you do the other "more lucrative" things! Please all GPs be aware of this scheme; this is what can kill your career in no time. I wish you will never find someone to hire in your clinic.
The owner has his name and his reputation attached to the practice. Therefore, he has the right to trust no one but himself. He needs to preserve his reputation that he has worked hard for many years to build. These expensive dificult procedures tend have higher chance of getting patient complaints and redos. When patients complain, they go straight to the owner and not the associate. When the case has to be redone, the owner, and not the associate, absorbs the cost. The owner has more years of experience and has performed more of these difficult cases than his associate. He had made mistakes earlier in his career and had learned from them.Therefore, the chance of repeating the same mistake should be smaller. Because the owner needs to spend more quality time to perform these difficult cases, I find nothing wrong with asking his associate to perform easier cases. In the end, all patients will be benefited from this arrangement. Happy patients = more word-of-mouth referrals. I think some day when you have your own office, you will understand.
"Same training as you" discounts the 15+ years of experience that the practice owner has that the new grad does not.
What is your level of experience in dental practice? Are you a dentist? The answers to your comments will be very clear as soon as you’re in the field.
I am a 6th year OMFS resident; I practiced for 3 years as a GP with a DSO before that. Always in touch with my classmates and GP fiends! The owner took the risk and for that the owner has the right to use the associate the way the owner likes (only fillings)! I love your logic! My experience as a GP was fantastic, in that DSO (not going to disclose) I was even placing implants (not only doing fillings) as an associate. Always good to expose these things to GPs especially the new grads so that they don't get stuck with such schemes! Good luck to everyone!
The desirable areas of this country are pretty saturated.
The less desirable areas are a win-win situation for both patients and providers
He is clearly an orthodontist.
That is the point, if new docs just do fillings they will not learn anything, they will not be able to develop experience.
They will learn how to do fillings well, and gain lots of experience doing it. I would not trust a GP to perform crown lengthening, ridge augmentations, long-span bridges, 3rd molar extractions etc if they aren’t good at simple direct restorative procedures.
Yes just fillings; and anything else they should refer not to specialists but to you
Think of it this way, for us (not you, us as in you and me).
I will not participate anymore in this discussion but at least I would like to think that we added to the awareness of any fellow new GP. Again, my all due respect to all of you, and always wish my colleagues the best.
I think we're getting caught up in the semantics of "fillings only" vs my general thought process of "bread and butter" vs "complex things that shouldn't be done without a lot of experience".
Interesting to see most people agree with the poster you replied to. As a physician, I dont think I have heard physicians voiced similar things. It would be crazy for a physician (the owner of a practice) to think the new ophthalmologist or ENT or Nephrologist etc... grad would only take on the low hanging fruits (eg., low reimbursement cases) until that person proves him/herself... Usually physician trust their peer enough to know when they are in over their head until they show otherwise...
