Once they have their own practice?
because I love sleeping in. =d
EDIT: Great posts guys.
because I love sleeping in. =d
EDIT: Great posts guys.
Last edited:
Have you ever heard of anyone opening shop at 10?
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Haha, probably not, but I'm right there with you on this one.
Perhaps you can try a rotating sechdule, so that you can sleep in on some days? Like Mo, Wed, Fri, Sat one week and Tue, Thrus, Sat the next? Or maybe start at 7 some days and 10 on others. Remember, you need to fit all your customer's schedules. Once you start inconveniencing them, they will find another dentist who doesn't.
Perhaps you can try a rotating sechdule, so that you can sleep in on some days? Like Mo, Wed, Fri, Sat one week and Tue, Thrus, Sat the next? Or maybe start at 7 some days and 10 on others. Remember, you need to fit all your customer's schedules. Once you start inconveniencing them, they will find another dentist who doesn't.
Yeah I think about that all the time, I'm a night-owl too haha
Once you own your own practice, you can make your hours whatever you want.
The problem, as anishannayya pointed out, is scheduling patients at times that are good for them.
Once you are established I don't see why you can't start late one day a week or so.
There are plenty of established dentists that I know of that work half days on fridays, so what is the difference whether it is the first half or the second half of the day that you work?
Once you own your own practice, you can make your hours whatever you want.
The problem, as anishannayya pointed out, is scheduling patients at times that are good for them.
Once you are established I don't see why you can't start late one day a week or so.
There are plenty of established dentists that I know of that work half days on fridays, so what is the difference whether it is the first half or the second half of the day that you work?
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One of the guys in my DS class was an instant success with a practice he built from scratch that started at NOON!
He picked his location very well. He catered to blue collar workers with great insurance and kids. The blue collar folks worked shift work so they liked to come in before and after their 2nd and 3rd shifts. Mothers loved bringing in the kids after school.
We worked noon to 5 PM. and took a one hour dinner break and then worked 6 PM to 10 PM on Monday through Thursday . On Fridays he worked Noon to 5PM and quit for the weekend. He had good staff people begging to come work for him.
The Point Is...
Yes, you can start at 10! As long as you are the boss and design your practice right, get the right staff and target the right patient pool.
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The beauty of having your own office is you can do anything you want. My sister, who is a GP, starts her workday at 10 AM. When she only has 2-3 patients on her appt book (it happens a lot lately due to the recession and the medicaid cut), she starts her day at 1 or 2pm and comes home at 4-5 pm. On Saturdays, which are her busiest days, she usually works 7-8 hours non-stop.
Your hours are even more flexible, if you are a dental specialist. At one of my busiest orthodontic offices (I have 3), I work 5 days a month (yes, a month not a week) 2pm-6pm on weekdays and 8am-noon on Saturdays. I work 2 days a month at my slowest office. My wife is a periodontist. Some days, she came in at 8 am to place 1-2 implants and went home 2 hours later.
Your hours are even more flexible, if you are a dental specialist. At one of my busiest orthodontic offices (I have 3), I work 5 days a month (yes, a month not a week) 2pm-6pm on weekdays and 8am-noon on Saturdays. I work 2 days a month at my slowest office. My wife is a periodontist. Some days, she came in at 8 am to place 1-2 implants and went home 2 hours later.
Do u have trouble surviving on these hours? It seems like dentistry doesn't offer as much financial security as I thought it does (compared to pharmacy or medicine)
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Not at all. Dentistry is the best because of the flexible hours. You can easily pay the office rent with 1 molar root canal treatment + 1 crown prep + a couple of dental fillings.
I am an orthodontist and I treat mostly kids. There is no reason for me to open at 8 am when the kids are in school. In 4 hours (from 2-6pm), I can see 50-80 patients with the help of 5-6 assistants
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At one of my associate jobs as an ortho in a busy GP office, the office doesn't open until 10. We see patients until 6 or even later until all the patients are finished with no lunch break. I have begged them to start my ortho patients earlier so I can get out earlier, but have only gotten them to concede to starting at 9:30 am on select days. It works for the owner doc who lives less than a 5 minute walk away, but I have a 40 minute commute tacked on each way and would rather start my day earlier.
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My good days are the days when I come to work at my own offices short hours, zero (or a lot fewer) complaints from patients, well organized charts and schedules, high production. Even with 3 private offices, I still have plenty of free days. I use these free days to work for a busy corporate dental office. When I am at this corporate office, I also have to work 8 hours/day (9-6pm and 10-7pm .1 hour lunch)👎.
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My office hour is 10am-5pm with an hour lunch. I'm just too lazy after 10 years working and thinking of quitting. Dentistry has been great but I'm just too lazy. I really admire those that keeps working and working and working and working. Why? Are they gonna bring all that money with them to the next life?
What r u gonna do if u quit?
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I wish I can work fewer days like you, Daurang. Maybe, I should stop working hard and just let my kids pay for their own education the same way we did for our own education🙂.
At least orthodontics is so easy .good hand skills not required, poor business skills are ok (just lower the fees and you get more patients), no hard manual labor, short work hours, low stress etc. Working 5 days/week as an orthodontist is way easier than working part time as a busboy at Disneyland (my old job in college).
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This is amazing. You don't have to give exact numbers, but with your office setup in this manner, what is your overhead looking like (assistants wages, rent, materials, etc)? That patient volume in that amount of time seems AMAZING.
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As this thread is starting to morph too, you'll find after a while that there's a difference between working a bazillion hours a week and trying to accomodate every last scheduling need of every one of your patients and finding a schedule that fits YOUR (and if not now, maybe someday in the future your familes) needs. That often means that you'll be working less hours/days and not even thinking twice about the potential $$ that you're giving up by NOT being in the office. In general, you'll find after practicing for a while what hours and/or days will wotk for MOST of your patients, and they weigh in what type of production numbers you need for your comfort and go from there.
Often the hours that you may think would be popular (evenings/weekends) may prove to not be as profitable as one might think, because sometimes those hours that on the surface are appealing to patients, often becoming appealing to your patients on a last minute notice to do something else (i.e. a nice weather summer Saturday can be very easy for a last minute patient cancellation to take their family to the beach, instead of seeing you in your office, or that 7PM appointment your patient scheduled for a crown prep 6 weeks ago, could very well end up conflicting with their kids soccer game, etc)
After a while, many dentists will realize that if you have a pateint seeing you just solely because you have some "odd" hours, that chances are that those patients won't be the ones that you'd classify as "good" patients when you really sit down and take an objective look at things.
One last caveat, as I'm typing this, I've been out of the office on vacation for a week now, and won't be headed back into the office for another 5 days, and more than likely when I get back to the office, it will still be there, and my patients will still show up 😀
Often the hours that you may think would be popular (evenings/weekends) may prove to not be as profitable as one might think, because sometimes those hours that on the surface are appealing to patients, often becoming appealing to your patients on a last minute notice to do something else (i.e. a nice weather summer Saturday can be very easy for a last minute patient cancellation to take their family to the beach, instead of seeing you in your office, or that 7PM appointment your patient scheduled for a crown prep 6 weeks ago, could very well end up conflicting with their kids soccer game, etc)
After a while, many dentists will realize that if you have a pateint seeing you just solely because you have some "odd" hours, that chances are that those patients won't be the ones that you'd classify as "good" patients when you really sit down and take an objective look at things.
One last caveat, as I'm typing this, I've been out of the office on vacation for a week now, and won't be headed back into the office for another 5 days, and more than likely when I get back to the office, it will still be there, and my patients will still show up 😀
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I work at a practice where the hours are:
M noon-7:30
T 7:00-2:30
W noon-7:30
Th 7:00-2:30
w/ 30 minute lunches. I love that I almost never hit traffic to and from work.
M noon-7:30
T 7:00-2:30
W noon-7:30
Th 7:00-2:30
w/ 30 minute lunches. I love that I almost never hit traffic to and from work.
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In addition to the 5-6 assistants who work with me in the back, I also have 2 girls working in the front. The overhead is not too bad because my wife and I share the 3 FT employees. The part time ortho assistants only come to work on the days we treat patients. The combined rent for 3 of my offices is $6200/month .I know some orthos who pay higher rent than that and it is only for just 1 office.
It is more cost effective for me to hire 5-6 part time ortho assistants (each of them get a flat rate of $120/day) than to hire 1 associate orthodontist. This is why so many new grad orthodontists complain that theyve had hard time finding associate jobs.
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I think orthodontists have better opportunities do well in CA than in other states. The population here is very stable despite the states high unemployment rate. My offices, UCLA, USC, and Loma Linda ortho programs continue to get new patients without having to advertise or to beg the GPs because we all charge very low fees. We treat the type of patients (medicaid, HMO, poor working families) that most orthodontists decline to treat.
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No I am not...I just have super-assistants😀.
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Wow, that is really interesting. I've thought about working late evenings when I get out (pending on if I have a family yet). Working as a receptionist at my aunt's office, so many people wanted later appointments when they were off work.
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I was opened 9am-9pm all seven days a week the first year. After awhile, you realize you can cut back hours and patients will still come to you regardless of the time available. Late night and Fridays sounds good but no shows is high during that time period.
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My schedule:
Mon & Tues: Only work if the office need me or with special request from some patients.
Wed- Thur: 9am-4pm with 2 hrs lunch (11-1)
Friday: 9am - 3pm with 2 hrs lunch.
Sat: 8am-11am once per month if needed.
Love my job. 😀😀😀😀 and I'm a lazy person also.
Mon & Tues: Only work if the office need me or with special request from some patients.
Wed- Thur: 9am-4pm with 2 hrs lunch (11-1)
Friday: 9am - 3pm with 2 hrs lunch.
Sat: 8am-11am once per month if needed.
Love my job. 😀😀😀😀 and I'm a lazy person also.
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Agreed with you on this. A fee for 1 ortho adjustment could pay an entire day of salary for each assistant. 🙂
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Join us here in Monterey! Salinas (right next to Monterey, off of highway 68) has a steadily growing population. Since house prices have also fallen like crazy, this is a great time to buy one (still overpriced, but that's California for you). It is always 68 degrees, and the beach is frigid cold. 🙂 At least you can wear shorts year round. I think if the beach is your major concern, you should look into Santa Barbara. Especially if you are into surfing. Nothing can beat SB for that.
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Aren't Monterey and Pacific Grove mostly retirement cities? Though that could be a good place to set up shop too if you like prosth 😛
I'm hoping to move from northern LA to northern Sac (~Roseville) once I finish DS... But all of super competition in Cali (everywhere) is slowly and sadly pushing the dream away 🙁
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Yes, PG is known as the artists + old people's town, but I don't think of artists + old people when I think of Monterey. The people who actually live in Monterey are more affluent (house prices are higher), and thereby older than the general population. However, many people commute from Salinas to Monterey to work. In fact, there are even some people who commute from Salinas to the SF Bay area. Salinas was a growing city, but now appears to be fairly stable @ a population of ~ 150,000. What was once a town covered with a bunch of farms (think John Steinbeck's books) has turned into a small city. The only real problem I see with Salinas is the shady part of town, known as "the East side". Around that area, you have a high percentage of lower income families, and unfortunately, some gang violence. This can be attributed to the nearby Soledad prison.
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Pismo Beach, CA
That place is exactly what you are thinking about. 75 degrees year round and one of the best strips of coastline in California. It's really small though (think < 8,000 people, and ~10 mile city), and I'm sure a beach-side house would be really expensive.
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Wow, from reading the posts from the practicing dentists, their lifestyle/work balance seems amazing. Maybe for a GP or other non-ortho they may have to work a bit more (?) but all in all this sounds great. Hopefully this is sustainable in the long term future, I have no idea if and how healthcare reform would affect dentistry.
