Dentistry in canada vs United states

[viper500190]

Hello everyone,

I am going to be going to dental school and I was wondering about where I want to locate when I get out. I am considering either Florida, Toronto, Canada or New York.

My main question is what are the differences between dentistry in Canada vs the United states in terms of income, license, GPR and other things that make them different and/or better or worse. I will be attending dental school in New York in the fall and when I get out of school I will probably do a GPR program and become an associate for a year or two and then try to own and operate my own practice.

Are there other countries that you think may be interesting to look into?

Please feel free to contribute any information on the topic.

Thank you!!

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[SMCohen]

There are different laws in every state pertaining to the practice of dentistry, so you will have to look that up wherever you live. Aside from that, if you're planning on settling in Canada, I would recommend associating in Canada so that you can learn how to run your future practice. For the most part, front office duties will be very similar but things like dental billing companies are not popular like they are in the US. You should know the basics of billing insurance companies and maybe becoming familiar with the types of plans offered, as a lot of Canadians have dental insurance (obviously depending on the area). Also, by associating in the city you wish to settle in, you will be able to better choose the area you want your practice to be in and the demographic you wish to serve.

To practice in Canada, you only need to take their national board practical, which is not live-patient based. In other countries, you may need to complete a foreign dentist training program.

In terms of income, a lot of the dentists I know in Canada base their fees on the Canadian Dental Association's 'fee guide'. This isn't mandatory though. In the US, there is no suggested fee schedule so fees are generally based on the average fees of the neighboring dentists. Your income in the US will also depend on your acceptance of HMO or PPO plans vs out-of-pocket payments.

Lastly, US-trained dentists say com-POS-ite and Canadian-trained dentists say COM-po-site

 

[mike3kgt]

Hello everyone,

I am going to be going to dental school and I was wondering about where I want to locate when I get out. I am considering either Florida, Toronto, Canada or New York.

My main question is what are the differences between dentistry in Canada vs the United states in terms of income, license, GPR and other things that make them different and/or better or worse. I will be attending dental school in New York in the fall and when I get out of school I will probably do a GPR program and become an associate for a year or two and then try to own and operate my own practice.

Are there other countries that you think may be interesting to look into?

Please feel free to contribute any information on the topic.

Thank you!!

I have a Canadian co-resident who's husband works in Canada while she goes to school and he is doing great in practice there.

I have heard pretty good things about dental practice in Canada vs. US, not to mention that if you don't mind the cold, Canada is a very nice place to live.

Then again, it's a little more difficult because unlike the US who has 30+ major metropolitan cities (500k+ people) as Canada only has 10 major metropolitan cities (500k+ people). Most people who want to move back to Canada only want to live in 3 places though: Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver.

Canada is a much smaller market and much more stringent rules of practice (i.e. they're practically socialists up there ) but from what I've heard, you can still carve out a nice niche in the major cities (unlike places like LA or NYC).

Good luck!

 

[Adversary]

There's no "fee guide" nationally, but some provinces have their own while others do not. I think litigation is lower, not just in dentistry, but in general.

However, if one of your choices is Toronto, I don't think you will do better as it is one of the most saturated markets. There are published stats that show the population to dentist ratio and some of the bigger cities have it as bad as 1 to 400.

Finally, taxes are higher in Canada to feed our social systems, but the economy is doing much better than the states. Ie., Western provinces are booming! Help wanted signs are everywhere so patients can afford dental treatment.

There are different laws in every state pertaining to the practice of dentistry, so you will have to look that up wherever you live. Aside from that, if you're planning on settling in Canada, I would recommend associating in Canada so that you can learn how to run your future practice. For the most part, front office duties will be very similar but things like dental billing companies are not popular like they are in the US. You should know the basics of billing insurance companies and maybe becoming familiar with the types of plans offered, as a lot of Canadians have dental insurance (obviously depending on the area). Also, by associating in the city you wish to settle in, you will be able to better choose the area you want your practice to be in and the demographic you wish to serve.

To practice in Canada, you only need to take their national board practical, which is not live-patient based. In other countries, you may need to complete a foreign dentist training program.

In terms of income, a lot of the dentists I know in Canada base their fees on the Canadian Dental Association's 'fee guide'. This isn't mandatory though. In the US, there is no suggested fee schedule so fees are generally based on the average fees of the neighboring dentists. Your income in the US will also depend on your acceptance of HMO or PPO plans vs out-of-pocket payments.

Lastly, US-trained dentists say com-POS-ite and Canadian-trained dentists say COM-po-site

 

[VCUDDS]

I agree with all the previous posts regarding practicing in Canada, I've practicing in the GTA (toronto, burlington) area for the past 3 years, and prior to that practiced in New York and Virginia so I have an idea about practicing dentistry in both countries.
There are some differences but are more related the demographics and the limitation of choices as opposed to the dental aspect of practice, you will be more limited to where you can practice because as previously mentioned, there are only a few metroplitan areas. The weather also plays a role, albiet small one, but if you've lived in canada before that should not be an issue.
The biggest problem is the dentist/patients ratio, in the city where I live, I could swear that there are more dentists than convience stores and it's true that you can have a ratio of 1:400 in many areas. If you move outside of that metro zone you will be in a slightly better shape but not by much because most areas are rural and the setup and type of dentistry that you can do there will be different. You are dealing with provinces (about 10 of them i think) vs states, and becuase of the landscape you probably have 2-3 zones of good market per province, compare that to 2-3 zones per states down south. You have more choices in the states and if you don't mind moving far you can still find areas with a very favorable ratio.
In terms of the dentistry itself, it's about 95-98% similiar, very minor differences in terms of what you can do and most insurances run the same way. The fee schedule used in most offices is pretty much the same, atleast in ontario, as it follows the ontario dental association fee guide.
You'll find that restorations are about the same, crowns and RCT's a bit less but that depends on what you charge, but labs cost more here, I remember a crown in NY used to cost about 100$ with most labs (unless you're sending it to china!), here it's about double that in the best case, and the lab we deal with in toronto charges 350 per crown which is alot.

Oh and another difference, it's Gutta PerCHa in the states, and Gutta PerKa in canada!.

Hope this helps

 

[reklahcs]

VCUDDS, am I right in assuming that you're an American?

In another post I asked about how the taxing worked for Americans working in Canada and how much tax they have to pay back to the US govt after they have passed the $92,900 limit. At $130,000ish in income, the tax bracket is 29% federally and 11% provincially in Ontario so that's 40% base tax on that amount paid to the Cdn govt. This is definitely higher than American tax rates for the same amount of income. Does the US govt start charging their own tax after the $92,900 mark? If so, do you have any ballpark figures on what the % is?

Thanks in advance for any info that you can provide on the topic as I greatly appreciate it. And btw Canada does have 10 provinces

 

[VCUDDS]

That's true when it comes to taxes, anything you make more than 93k will have to be taxed by uncle sam, the percentage depends on how much more as that will put you in different brakcet as well as if you have dependents and other stuff that you can claim. one advantage to claiming taxes in both countries is that you can get some money back from the canadians (basically equivalent of pension contributions as it's automatically done here in canada as part of your taxes). Now i just learned this for this year so i dont know how that plays out, also i dont know if it'll make a difference for you, if you are canadian living in the states vs me as an american living in canada!.
As you can see the stuff is very complicated, my advise would be to sit with a good accountant with experience in both canadian/us tax system as i'm sure there are many loopholes that can make this issue easier to swallow!.

cheers!