I’m almost 10 years out as a GP, kinda burnt out from needles/blood/injections. I do like providing simple Ortho, and the happy patients. On the flip side I make about 250k a year, no student debt. I could pay in full for one of those private programs, but is it worth it? It would probably eat away all my savings. I’d like to make atleast 300k when I’m out of residency to make it worth my while of going back, plus also enjoy my career some more. Thoughts?
Is it it worth it for a GP to go back for Otho residency?
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Financially, staying as a GP makes a lot more sense. But if you are really burnt out, then ortho might be the better choice for your happiness and longevity.
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not everything in life is a financial calculation.
I agree it seems on average orthos are pretty happy. I think making 300k is very reasonable. Are you a practice owner now? Do you have a spouse/kids and are they ready for a pay cut?
I agree it seems on average orthos are pretty happy. I think making 300k is very reasonable. Are you a practice owner now? Do you have a spouse/kids and are they ready for a pay cut?
w
no kids, but married. I’m an associate right now. Really only thing I’m concerned with is making sure I have health insurance for my wife and I during residency, which these private programs don’t offer.
no kids, but married. I’m an associate right now. Really only thing I’m concerned with is making sure I have health insurance for my wife and I during residency, which these private programs don’t offer.
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I’m not sure about the answer to health ins.
anecdotal, but we have residents in our state school that have been out for 10+ yr like yourself. They are all much better residents as well than us new grads lol.
have you looked into building an app or is this all theoretical? You may surprise yourself and even get into a cheaper program than 250k.
anecdotal, but we have residents in our state school that have been out for 10+ yr like yourself. They are all much better residents as well than us new grads lol.
have you looked into building an app or is this all theoretical? You may surprise yourself and even get into a cheaper program than 250k.
Well been heavily considering it. Honestly, whether it’s cheaper or not isn’t the issue. The opportunity cost of not working for 3 years is the bigger loss for me.
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I am five years out of school. Applying this cycle. The opportunity cost 600k-800k is huge! Hopefully it'll pay off.
E
yes it is. Do you have any student debt? Do you own or associate? Married or have kids?
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My opinion only, but I do not put much emphasis on lost opportunity cost. If you were saddled with DS and other debt and were attending one of those stupid expensive ortho factories ... then I would be concerned. Sounds like you have no debt and some savings. What you should be worried about is REGRET. Regret for not doing something that you want to do.
Your married. No kids. I'm sure your wife has an opinion on this? What is her opinion? Worried about health insurance. Your wife needs to be employed at a place that offers health insurance. My wife worked all through my residency.
If you want to be an orthodontist. Then just do it if you are debt free. The money will follow and you'll be doing something that you like.
The flip side to all of this is. Do you hate general dentistry because you are an associate? Ownership changes the dynamics. Everyone here loves to talk about the holy grail of ownership. Ownership has it's own problems. Requires immense effort and time, but in the end .... you are building something with value.
Thanks for the advice, regret is definitely something I don’t want. I don’t think ownership of being a GP will necessarily make me happier. Now ownership as an Ortho would be nice since I would actually enjoy the work.
as far as the Ortho factories, they are probably my best shot for acceptance, but I do have enough savings to cover the cost. I figure I could graduate around 38 with still about 100-200k in retirement, and no student debts as an orthodontist. Whether that is worth it is up for debate.
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It can only be an enjoyable job when you have enough patients to work on. There have to be enough patients for you to generate enough revenue so you can pay all the business expenses and have and have some leftover money to pay back the student loans and to support your family. It can be very depressing and stressful when you go to work with very few patients on your appointment book. Patient shortage is probably the main reason why many of my colleagues on the Orthotown forum have said ortho is not worth pursuing anymore and that they don’t want their kids to follow their footstep. And I am sure you’ve have heard of the reasons why they can’t get enough patients….competition (due to openings of new ortho programs), more GPs who do ortho, older orthos who don’t retire, Invisalign, SmileDirect etc.
So to get more ortho patients to fill your appointment book, you have to do things that you hate like going door to door to meet the referring GPs, working for the “evil” dental corps, working for the GP as an in-house ortho etc. The same applies to other dental specialties (OS, perio, endo). And to get more patients to accept the treatments, you may have to charge a reasonable fee (lower what you want) and sign up with as many insurance plans as possible. There is no such thing as a perfect job. Nothing in life is easy. You have to give up something (years of education, student loans, your ego etc) in order to gain something (money, less physically demanding job, respect, comfortable lifestyle etc). To enjoy doing something, you have to be able to make enough to pay bills first....and save enough for your retirement.
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No debt, associate, married with kids
Does your wife work? How are you planning on getting health insurance for the family?
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I have done that. The fact you are an associate means you won't have any income during your residency. But doing what you love doing has no price tag on it. Most ortho around here makes about 1100-1200$ per day and they seem to have a hard time getting their private office busy.
If you have been out for 10 years, there is that challenge of getting together at least 3 good recommendations. Maybe you still have some connections. Also you probably won't be doing it for money either. That seems to only work for those who got into the program right out of school. You probably, proabaly I mean, will be able to practice a bit longer, due to less strain on the body and just for the pure enjoyment of it.
I do recommend it.
If you have been out for 10 years, there is that challenge of getting together at least 3 good recommendations. Maybe you still have some connections. Also you probably won't be doing it for money either. That seems to only work for those who got into the program right out of school. You probably, proabaly I mean, will be able to practice a bit longer, due to less strain on the body and just for the pure enjoyment of it.
I do recommend it.
OP, have you shadowed an orthodontist yet? Just because you are interested in orthodontic treatment does not mean that you will enjoy being an orthodontist. The concept of moving teeth and dentofacial orthopedics is very interesting to me, but following an orthodontist for a few days was a big wake up call. You will be seeing TONS of people in a relatively short amount of time. Your interactions with your patients, and their parents, will be superficial and brief (rinse repeat, rinse repeat, rinse repeat...).
The jumping up and down, mad-house feel, of an orthodontist office was not for me. Although, there are a lot of people that like it just for that reason!
The jumping up and down, mad-house feel, of an orthodontist office was not for me. Although, there are a lot of people that like it just for that reason!
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Wife does not work. There are student health insurance plans with individual policies and individuals with dependent policies. If there is a need to cover a spouse and/or child(ren), then you would need to enroll in a plan that includes dependent coverage.
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Cost of healthcare is nothing compared to the cost of attending the school. Cost of knowing you tried to do your best in the future is priceless.
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I've never met an ortho that regrets their decision.
If you paid 300k+ for orthodontics residency plus gave up 3 years of your earning years, would you be willing to readily admit to people that you regretted it?
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If you wind up regretting it, you can go back to being a GP. No one will stop you.
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I feel like I've heard from many GP's that they regret becoming dentists...
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Yeah. I work in 6 locations and deal with 6 different GP's. I work in close proximity to the GPs. I can hear the GP's patients. The complaints. The patients saying they are not numb yet. Patients saying their last dentist never told them about the peri-apical abscess on their molar. Denture and FPD patients constantly complaining and coming back for adjustments. Implants failing. Why do I need a deep cleaning says the patient who hasn't had a prophy in the last 5 plus yrs. Just give me my free insurance "simple" cleaning. Patient doesn't like the shade on their new crown/veneer. Tooth still hurts after the rct/filling/crown/bridge, etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc. OMG.
These DSO GPs are not happy. They have a difficult job. An exhausting job. Yes. Ortho tx is utterly repetitive. But it is predictable, painless and relatively easy. At every location ... my ortho staff and I are laughing, talking about football. Of course .... I have "those" complainer patients, but not to the extent that my poor GP colleagues have to deal with.
Being an orthodontist is less stressful. Period. And for all those that say the ortho profession is dying. I earn almost TWICE what my DSO GP colleagues earn.
Maybe I’m just a talentless hack but I find residency just as hard if not harder than dental school. Takes a lot of precision and attention to detail.
I find it a bit disingenuous to compare yourself, a rockstar ortho veteran, to what are most likely newish dental grads working corporate.
I have a few friends that graduated and they are getting worked to the bone at corporate offices, dealing with angry parents, etc. Ortho is awesome and I would never go back, but I feel the need to provide some perspective.
I find it a bit disingenuous to compare yourself, a rockstar ortho veteran, to what are most likely newish dental grads working corporate.
I have a few friends that graduated and they are getting worked to the bone at corporate offices, dealing with angry parents, etc. Ortho is awesome and I would never go back, but I feel the need to provide some perspective.
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i have met a couple
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DSO does work GOs to the bone. Unfortunately DSO has been growing steadily and I don’t see it slowing down. GPS are somewhat becoming like nurses. Angry, entitled, and unreasonable patients filing complaints, and hospital admistrators/DSO owners who will do anything to satisfy their requests, at the cost of GPs. And why not? GPs are replaceable easily. 😔
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I'm curious to hear why? They make way more than a GP and generally have better lifestyle and low stress.
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Agreed what’s not to like?
Sometimes a career is more than taking it easy and BSing at work. Agreed, dentistry is not easy.
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Well if you look at average salary of both of course Ortho makes more. there are different scenarios, a GP can own multiple various specialty offices, have specialists work for them and absolutely destroy what any one specific orthodontist would make. Once you become ortho you cannot own a general dentist practice and have associates work for you. Your mentality is incorrect in that you believe the type of works makes you the most money but at the end of the day being your own boss makes the sky the limit.
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how many GPs do you know that own various specialty offices? I would guess less than 1% of GPs own multiple specialty offices
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explain that 1% statistic and how you got it? just because it seems impossible to you doesn't mean it is out of reach. if you can invest your time and money it will happen
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It’s the same at the corp offices where I work at. My assistants always have free time to play with their phones, especially in the morning when the schedule is very light because the kids are at schools. I get sore fingers not from working but from playing games on my phone. Many of the assistants on the general side want to learn ortho and some have tried to pass the RDA licensing exams so they can get the easy ortho assisting job.
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I guess ortho programs are different around the country. I was very lucky to attend a very easy 2-yr ortho program. I just showed up for all the classes and learned to treat ortho patients. And 2 years later, I was awarded an ortho certificate + a MS degree. Unlike dental school, I didn’t have to go around looking for the right kind of patients who need the right kind of dental procedures (class II fillings, molar endos, full mouth dentures etc) so I could graduate on time. Unlike dental school, I didn’t have to go around begging the clinical instructors for signatures. I remember when I was in dental school, I had to get like 5-6 different signatures from different instructors for just one silly PFM crown.
After a year or two of working at busy corp offices, you should gain enough clinical experience and become more confident in making the all the tx decisions. If you are still struggling clinically and feel doing ortho is hard after having worked for a few years, then you are not cut out to be an ortho.
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Not having enough patients to work on because of the openings of new ortho programs that pumps out more new grads every year and more GPs who do ortho in their offices.
Having to go to different GP offices to beg them to refer patients to you.
The overhead is too high.
High student loan debt.
Practicing ortho is not hard. It's actually very fun. Most orthos don't want to retire because it's a fun job. But in order to make $$$ in ortho, you have to make a few sacrifices that I know some young orthos are not willing to make.......like working on the weekends, working for a GP as an in-house ortho, traveling to multiple offices, traveling to work at a neighboring state, opening a low overhead/low tech office, getting low paid jobs at the beginning because they don't have a lot of clinical experiences etc. It's stressful when you don't make enough money to pay bills and to support your family.
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With that mentality, it will only be a dream for you
Oh no...
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I agree. It’s not easy for the GP owners to save enough cases to keep their in-house specialists busy and happy. Even busy corp offices have hard time getting enough patients to keep their specialists busy. The periodontist at my corp quit because there weren’t enough patients (due to Covid) to keep her happy. It’s been almost a year and this corp office still doesn’t have a periodontist.
For the specialists to get enough patients, they need referrals from multiple GP offices. If the GPs know that that owner of the specialty office is a GP, they will never send their patients there. If I were a GP, I wouldn’t refer my patients either.
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Yep.
You are speaking of a GP having in-house specialists. This is for sure difficult, but doable. What our friend Rambu is saying is a "GP can own multiple various specialty offices". Which is basically a fantasy, statistically speaking.
