I want an easier lifestyle than being a GP also, but I want to make more money. I make about 250k as a GP, but it comes with its stresses. Can I make more as an orthodontist with less stress?
I want to be an orthodontist to make more money
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Yes
Do you practice in a rural setting?
Yes
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Ironically- I would say just continue being a GP and incorporate ortho into your practice and or find a way to hire an associate and take more days off.
Make your practice better, bring up the income a bit and hire an associate and chill. You already make top % of dentists. You are doing great. There is no guarantee that changing careers will “make more” and have an easier lifestyle. If you were struggling dentist then I would understand the change. But you are effectively giving up your golden goose. Your choice!
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I guess but a lot of orthos kill it, like 500k+. It’s much easier to make that much as an ortho then keep it up as a GP- law of avgs
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Have you talked to new grad orthos? I know quite a few <5 year out orthos and it’s rough.
I do agree that older established orthos have it good, but you shouldn’t base your judgement on some guy that has been on the block for 30 years with an established reputation.
Talk to <5/<10 year orthos to get a taste of the climate.
What are the people you know making?
I’ve taken it and liked it. Problem is you don’t know what you don’t know so you get into trouble sometimes. Makes doing ortho not as fun as it should be. Also, when you are super busy as a GP your time is not productive doing reties unless you train staff like an orthodontist. I just don’t want to come out of residency making less than I am as an ortho.
I doubt many newly graduated orthodontists are making more than 250,000 a year. Though it’s probably a lot less stressful than being a GP.
Whats the typical mid career ortho making?
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Have a friend who is graduating this year from his residency. He’s gotten several offers of $400k a year.
What state?
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New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma. Only states he’s looking into due to having family close by
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Well that's good to hear that he is graduating and getting offers like that. Before I graduated from dental school, I also was getting proposals from companies that were offering similar incredibly high numbers. Turns out they were duds. I recommend putting in 1-3 years of actual real work to get a real gauge of income.
I don't doubt the proposals- but there's alot out there. Just typing in general dentist texas shows offers from 150k to 500k+ as general dentist.
dentaltimes
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I totally agree— hard to know for sure until you’ve been in it for a bit. I guess it’s nice knowing you can still make a good amount of money in private practice and not even look into corporate.
Why not try OS? There was some ADA report that said they were the highest paid dental specialty.
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Taking some ortho CE classes and treating some ortho cases are not the same as practicing orthodontics full time. The whole point of doing ortho residency is to have a good lifestyle....for not having to peform general dental procedures for the rest of your life. It's no good if you still have to practice general dentistry because the profit from treating a few ortho patients is not enough to pay the bills. It's no good if you have to sit down to do all the wire changes yourself because you don't have enough ortho patients to hire an experience ortho specific assistant, who can help you do all the back breaking work. The reason I keep saying ortho is an easy job, which allows me to work so many days and not feeling exhausted at the end of the day, is I don't have to do sit down for a prolonged period of time....bending my back and neck like the GPs.
Strictly financial, is ortho residency worth the opportunity cost when you already make 250k a year?
I think the back breaking part of GP gets way overblown. Stay in reasonably good shape and not overweight and it really doesn’t affect you that much, probably a little more than ortho.
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If doing 2 crowns a day (that takes 10 min of actual sit down prepping) and 3-5 fillings (each fill probably takes 15-20 min) and doing 20 hygiene checks "breaks" your back...then I dunno what to say. The average dental office does this predictably. Granted some days are 0 crowns and 10-15 fills (which does break your back)...the average of 1-2 crowns 3-5 fills and hygiene checks equates to barely being hunched over. I actually tell my front that my max for the day is 10 fills, and max for a session booked is 3 fillings because I just don't like being hunched over for that long doing 10+ fills all day and I don't like prolong bending over for 3+ fills on a patient. You control your schedule- so you can do whatever you want.
Today my schedule is 1 crown 3 fills and zoom whitening with 20 hygiene checks (which I do standing up). So for back breaking work...it isn't that bad.
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Perhaps, you don't work hard enough to have back pain. Most GPs I know have complained to me about having back problems, espcially the more successful ones. They are successful because they work hard. In dentistry, if you don't sit down and work, you don't make money....unless you have an unlimited supply of patients that allows you to hire associates to work for you.
I don't know how much you will make as an ortho. Your ortho income depends on how hard you work and the number of patients you treat per day. The more traveling jobs you have (if you are not like some of the new grads, who are very picky about the job offers), the more days you work per month, and the more patients you treat per day, the more money you will make. If you only travel to 1 office and only see 100 active patients (100 patients x $150 per monthly visit), you only collect $15k a month and only net around $7.5k a month (assuming your overhead is 50%)....then you make way less than $250k/year.
Your income also depends on your relationship with the referring GPs. No referring GP = no patient to treat. If you hate going around begging them to refer, then you shouldn't specialize.
Many here have complimented me for my hard work. I think they have complimented a wrong person. I actually don't work that hard and the evidence for this is I have been a very frequent poster on this forum for the last 10 years. I probably work a lot harder than most of my ortho colleagues. I know most orthos don't work on the weekends. But if you compare the amount of work that I put into my practice to that of the general dentists, mine is way less. Working as an orthodontist 7 days/week is many times easier than working as a GP 3-4 days/week.
I choose to work many days not because I really enjoy doing ortho (nobody likes to work) but because I want to make as much as possible. It's a good feeling to see my kids are well taken cared of. Why not make as much as possible now when ortho is still a very good field? I feel it's a waste not take advantage of the low stress nature of this job by staying home 3-4 days/week doing nothing.
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Ha ha, what I meant was perhaps, you are practicing in a non-competitive area where you don't have to work that hard in order to make $250k as a GP. Here in CA, in order to net that much, the GPs have work a lot harder and have higher chance of getting back pain....that's because the tx fees are lower due to competition.
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I remember those days working for someone else in so-cal. It was literally 3-4 crowns a day with 10+ fillings- throw in a root canal and an extraction- and you have an "average" day. The fees were so low that I would barely break base. And then the office manager would come and tell me that "I wasn't good enough."
I don't miss those days at all.
But I'm glad it's working out for you Charles.
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That's right. In order to make money here in CA, you have to be good and fast and treat high patient volume. If you are not good/fast or your office doesn't have enough patients to fill your appt book, you must know how to keep the overhead as low as possible (to compensate for the low fees) in order to survive. At least it's not a complete waste of time. I am sure you had learned a lot from working at such busy office. And with the clinical skills that you acquired from your previous jobs, you have had no problem taking over a busy existing office and running it smoothly and successfully.
It's different for ortho. Practicing ortho in an area, where it is more favorable (ie less saturation, more rural) for the GPs, does not necessarily guarantee that this orthodontist will do well. There are a lot of other factors that determine the overall success of an orthodontist:
1. GPs to orthodontists ratio.
2. Population growth. High birthrate in the Hispanic population and high migration rate of Asian and Hispanic immigrants to CA have helped my practices a lot. But if you don't want to treat these patients because you are practicing in high income areas or because you assume they don't have money, then this increase in population won't help you much.
3. The presence of corp offices. More corp offices = more jobs available for orthodontists who want to supplement their income in addition to working at their own offices. I know an ortho, who has a private practice in Utah and has to fly to AZ to work for Western Dental. It's because there is no corp office in his area.
4. High employment rate. When people have good jobs and good insurances they are more willling to pay for their kids' braces. I wonder what happened to the orthodontists in Detroit and the students who attended dental school there when the city declared bankruptcy.
5. Vanity: people in big cities tend to care more about how their teeth look. Many of my adult patients want to get braces for very minor malalignment problems....easy 12-18 month case, easy money.
6. Willingness of the orthodontist to travel to multiple offices and to work on weekends. More work days, more patients = higher income.
I am not sure if I would do well if I set up my practice in an area outside of CA, where it's not as culturally diverse as in CA. I think many Hispanic and Asian patients prefer to see Asian orthodontists, like myself, because they see that I am an immigrant like them.... and they feel that I can connect with them better.
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JordanAvery
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If I were you, I'd do both, but depending on the possibilities. I wouldn't renounce at GP for the orthodontist career unless I was sure I'd make a lot more money. I have a friend that is an orthodontist, and he became very requested by clients because of authoritydental.com, because this platform offers access to a huge network of trusted dental professionals, and he is one of them. Such projects could take your career to another level, and money will come with it, so consider this option, before you make a decision.
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Off-topic question. But if you make 250K as an associate dentist, is it worth it to own then with all the stresses of ownership? Even if owners make say +400K, that is kinda misleading because of overhead costs and they have to pay staff. So owners probably take home similar as the 250K associate. Am I right?
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