Oral Surgeons make more

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DOCMagic85

Do you all think its fair that oral surgeons make much more on average than general surgeons? With their cash cow procedures they make a ton.
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DOCMagic85 said:
Do you all think its fair that oral surgeons make much more on average than general surgeons? With their cash cow procedures they make a ton.
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you should see what the cash-cow farmers make



/MOO$$$$OO$$$
 
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Its not fair that a dermatologist makes more than I do despite having less training.

Its not fair that some attorneys or stockbrokers make more than I do despite having less training.

Its really not fair that Paris Hilton and Joe Francis make more than I do.

But I do what I do because I enjoy it and frankly, I make a pretty darn good salary. So I don't really care what oral surgeons make - more power to them for it. I'd like to make even more but I don't begrudge anyone who makes more because as noted above, life isn't fair.
 
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DOCMagic85 said:
Do you all think its fair that oral surgeons make much more on average than general surgeons? With their cash cow procedures they make a ton.
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Oral surgeons spend roughly the same amount of time training as surgeons (4 yrs. dental school, 4-6 yrs. residency), although perhaps less rigorous. Nevertheless, there is not a gross disparity in training here, so I don't find the situation any different from the reality of the surgical subspecialties making significantly more than general surgeons.
 
If you love your job, you'll never work a day in your life. I know a surgeon that is 60, and still takes q4 in-house trauma call, and he loves it, and especially teaching residents. Endodontists can make righteous bank doing root canals all day, but, boy howdy, same thing over and over. As long as my bills are paid and I have a buck in my pocket, and I don't dread waking up every day and trying to think of reasons to call in sick, I figure I'm several steps ahead of the game.

And "fair" is the weather. It's justice and/or equity, although I see nothing inequitable about it.
 
After the relief of pain I got from having my wisdom teeth pulled, oral surgeons can make as much as they want as far as I'm concerned.
 
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eclcell said:
After the relief of pain I got from having my wisdom teeth pulled, oral surgeons can make as much as they want as far as I'm concerned.
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True.

You want to talk fair?

Is it fair this schmuck is making more in 2008-2009 than I'll make.....ever? Staying at home is such hard work.

marbury.jpg
 
he has extraordinary talent.. we can teach anybody to do what you do.. so who is the shmuck?
 
DOCMagic85 said:
Do you all think its fair that oral surgeons make much more on average than general surgeons? With their cash cow procedures they make a ton.
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oral surgery is a great money making field... they make more because there are less of them.. avg they prolly make in the 600 range
 
I'm surprised to hear that since that's at odds with published salary information that I've seen. I've actually heard that it's more like $200K.
 
Smoke This said:
I'm surprised to hear that since that's at odds with published salary information that I've seen. I've actually heard that it's more like $200K.
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Yup. He may be thinking OMFS or whatever the huge 6 year program is where you can earn an MD and such. The oral surgeon I know -took out my wisdom teeth - seemed really unhappy and really didn't seem like he was making a half million a year. I also don't think there are 'few' oral surgeons. Maybe not though ... really doesn't seem all that different than getting MD/DO and doing ENT or Uro ... comparable lenght of residency, comparable salary (also not yanking wisdom teeth day in and out). Probably different in mal practice, overhead etc. Isn't it very competitive to land an oral surgery residency too?? It seems like you'd need the same drive and skill as landing a specialized surgery residency.
 
maceo said:
he has extraordinary talent.. we can teach anybody to do what you do.. so who is the shmuck?
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Stephon Marbury? There are many words to describe him. "Extraordinary talent" are not the correct ones.
 
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maceo said:
oral surgery is a great money making field... they make more because there are less of them.. avg they prolly make in the 600 range
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Smoke This said:
I'm surprised to hear that since that's at odds with published salary information that I've seen. I've actually heard that it's more like $200K.
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In between lies the truth. 200k is near the mean for practice-owning general dentists (if ADA surveys are to be believed), and 350 or so on average for oral surgeons.
 
All the dental specialists make a TON of money. But it's no guarantee going in to dental school as they had to be the very top of their dental school class. Think about how much an orthodontist makes to slap braces on your kid. It's crazy the money they make but you just have to do the work you like and let everyone else do the same. Life isn't all about making the most money.
 
Smoke This said:
I'm surprised to hear that since that's at odds with published salary information that I've seen. I've actually heard that it's more like $200K.
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One of the seniors at my school is making a mock business plan for an oral surgery private practice, and his findings from surveying the part-timers at our school and private practice oral surgeons is that clearing $265,000 the first year after you open a practice straight out of residency would be a conservative salary estimate.

The math looks good though if you're a straight private practice OMFS. A case of impacted wisdom teeth with IV conscious sedation runs in the $2200-3000 range depending on location, and a surgeon with a few years of experience can easily manage 2/hour. Do the math on that and you can see how easily things can get crazy.
 
JaggerPlate said:
Yup. He may be thinking OMFS or whatever the huge 6 year program is where you can earn an MD and such. The oral surgeon I know -took out my wisdom teeth - seemed really unhappy and really didn't seem like he was making a half million a year. I also don't think there are 'few' oral surgeons. Maybe not though ... really doesn't seem all that different than getting MD/DO and doing ENT or Uro ... comparable lenght of residency, comparable salary (also not yanking wisdom teeth day in and out). Probably different in mal practice, overhead etc. Isn't it very competitive to land an oral surgery residency too?? It seems like you'd need the same drive and skill as landing a specialized surgery residency.
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Note that the 6 year MD linked OMFS programs and the 4 year DDS only OMFS programs have literally no difference in scope of practice after graduation. The only difference is the letters.

The major difference between ENT and OMFS is the "bread and butter" procedures: ENT it's tubes and tonsils, OMFS it's teeth and titanium (dental implants). For academic OMFS the procedural scope is very similar to ENT (Ablative cancer, microvascular recon, craniofacial, pan-facial trauma, facial cosmetics, and orthognathics).
 
armorshell said:
Note that the 6 year MD linked OMFS programs and the 4 year DDS only OMFS programs have literally no difference in scope of practice after graduation. The only difference is the letters.

The major difference between ENT and OMFS is the "bread and butter" procedures: ENT it's tubes and tonsils, OMFS it's teeth and titanium (dental implants). For academic OMFS the procedural scope is very similar to ENT (Ablative cancer, microvascular recon, craniofacial, pan-facial trauma, facial cosmetics, and orthognathics).
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Interesting.

Although not nearly as interesting as the phallic shaped thing in your avatar! ;)
 
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armorshell said:
One of the seniors at my school is making a mock business plan for an oral surgery private practice, and his findings from surveying the part-timers at our school and private practice oral surgeons is that clearing $265,000 the first year after you open a practice straight out of residency would be a conservative salary estimate.

The math looks good though if you're a straight private practice OMFS. A case of impacted wisdom teeth with IV conscious sedation runs in the $2200-3000 range depending on location, and a surgeon with a few years of experience can easily manage 2/hour. Do the math on that and you can see how easily things can get crazy.
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So $2200-3000 *2 an hour?? How many hours a day?? Doesn't seem reasonable that you could work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, clearing 80 patients and keep this up for long. Where do the patients come from??? My brother and I got our wisdom teeth out from the same doc, he works in nice area, doesn't seem like too much competition and there is no WAY in the world this guy was doing that many surgeries. Seems like he spent most of his time consulting.

Also, my question is ... considering all this, how competitive is it to land a 4 year Oral Surg residency (for example)?? I mean professions like plastic surg and derm have huge, huge potential (as you were saying with the oral surg field -which by the way, I'm not doubting) but landing a derm residency or integrated PRS requires you to be top of class, perfect board scores, research, LORs, etc. Is this the same for oral??
 
JaggerPlate said:
So $2200-3000 *2 an hour?? How many hours a day?? Doesn't seem reasonable that you could work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, clearing 80 patients and keep this up for long. Where do the patients come from??? My brother and I got our wisdom teeth out from the same doc, he works in nice area, doesn't seem like too much competition and there is no WAY in the world this guy was doing that many surgeries. Seems like he spent most of his time consulting.

Also, my question is ... considering all this, how competitive is it to land a 4 year Oral Surg residency (for example)?? I mean professions like plastic surg and derm have huge, huge potential (as you were saying with the oral surg field -which by the way, I'm not doubting) but landing a derm residency or integrated PRS requires you to be top of class, perfect board scores, research, LORs, etc. Is this the same for oral??
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You've made a good point: it's not reasonable to assume that anyone could possibly chug out a schedule like that for any reasonable amount of time (or have to patient base to support it. But even cutting that schedule with random things like dental implants, regular extractions, follow ups, etc... still gives an incredible potential for earning. Doing 12 sets of wisdom teeth a week, 40 weeks a year with a 65% overhead gives you a take home of $336,000 (at the lowest end of the fee schedule) and that's just the wisdom teeth.

As far as competitiveness, OMFS is probably the 2nd most competitive specialty in dentistry next to orthodontics. 4 year programs actually tend to be more competitive than 6 year programs because there are less of them and a majority of applicants tend to favor them (most likely because of the lesser time commitment and the fact that there is little to no financial benefit to obtaining an MD). General guidelines for acceptance are top 10% of the class and above a 90 on the part 1 dental board. Externships at various OMFS programs is a must as are good LORs, but research probably isn't as important as it is for PRS, derm or orthodontics.

Are these things hard to achieve? Yes. How hard they are compared to achieving what you need to get into PRS or derm I have no idea.
 
Oral surgery (i always think OMFS) does have great potential for earnings, and a great lifestyle to boot. 200k sounds on the low side to me, just from having friends recently out of dental school and in practice doing general dentistry.

Also during my in hospital OMFS rotation on clinic days (4/wk) from 8-12 we did wisdom teeth extractions. An average was 3 a day, 5 max if every patient wasnt 4 teeth. Of course, this isnt private practice and no rush to cram patients in, it was a very relaxed pace and environment, and they ran about 2K. Not a bad pull....
 
Most of the OMFS guys that I know are raking in the cash. If you're doing a good mix of extractions and implants, you're making serious money.
 
armorshell said:
As far as competitiveness, OMFS is probably the 2nd most competitive specialty in dentistry next to orthodontics. 4 year programs actually tend to be more competitive than 6 year programs because there are less of them and a majority of applicants tend to favor them (most likely because of the lesser time commitment and the fact that there is little to no financial benefit to obtaining an MD). General guidelines for acceptance are top 10% of the class and above a 90 on the part 1 dental board. Externships at various OMFS programs is a must as are good LORs, but research probably isn't as important as it is for PRS, derm or orthodontics.
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6 year OMFS is harder to get into than 4 yr OMFS because you need to meet medical school requirements. Medical schools reject applicants who they don't feel will make it through med school, USMLE, etc. Thats the reason why more 6 year programs go unmatched, not because its easier but because requirements for acceptance is much stiffer than the 4 year programs.
 
WestCoast said:
6 year OMFS is harder to get into than 4 yr OMFS because you need to meet medical school requirements. Medical schools reject applicants who they don't feel will make it through med school, USMLE, etc. Thats the reason why more 6 year programs go unmatched, not because its easier but because requirements for acceptance is much stiffer than the 4 year programs.
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I can respect that, especially since with my crap undergraduate grades I expect to be laughed out of a med school interview or 3 next year, but I'm just going off of what I've heard from multiple program directors and lots of applicants/residents. My home program however is a 4 year program so there's probably some bias there.
 
Well I guess managed care hasnt taken over dentistry like it has medicine, so oral surgeons can charge a fee for their services and actually get paid for it.
 
DOCMagic85 said:
Well I guess managed care hasnt taken over dentistry like it has medicine, so oral surgeons can charge a fee for their services and actually get paid for it.
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Yeah, but for the same reason, oral surgeons has taken a hit with the recent economic downturn, similar to derm and plastics
 
eclcell said:
After the relief of pain I got from having my wisdom teeth pulled, oral surgeons can make as much as they want as far as I'm concerned.
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What about the relief you would feel from having your life-threatening appendicitis taken care of?
 
Celiac Plexus said:
What about the relief you would feel from having your life-threatening appendicitis taken care of?
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Medicine is everyone's God-given entitlement, no matter how poorly you take care of yourself or how little you're willing to spend for it. We all know that. Dentistry, on the other hand, is still an expendable luxury...or at least, that's what the politicians think. :rolleyes: If it means the difference between getting paid for what I do and giving half my care away for free, I'm happy to be marginalized that way.
 
homealone3 said:
Oral surgeons spend roughly the same amount of time training as surgeons (4 yrs. dental school, 4-6 yrs. residency), although perhaps less rigorous.
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Obviously has not talked to a OMFS resident. We are not governed by the 80hr week rule, nor does any self respecting OMFS resident abide by them if they applied to us.
 
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shabu2 said:
Obviously has not talked to a OMFS resident. We are not governed by the 80hr week rule, nor does any self respecting OMFS resident abide by them if they applied to us.
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Obviously has not talked to a general surgery resident.

While we may be governed by the 80 hr average week rule, many programs covertly or overtly ignore that rule and there are still many diehard old school residents who also would not abide by it even if they were forced to.

(this really doesn't need to be an argument about who works harder, but it is ridiculous to assume that just because a "rule" exists that all surgery programs care about it).
 
I am not in anyway dismissing or bashing my sister services. I just get rubbed the wrong way when med students are always quick to point out that us "dental" guys' training is not as rigorous as some of the medical subspecialties. We all have a niche and every department is well respected in their own right.
 
shabu2 said:
I am not in anyway dismissing or bashing my sister services. I just get rubbed the wrong way when med students are always quick to point out that us "dental" guys' training is not as rigorous as some of the medical subspecialties. We all have a niche and every department is well respected in their own right.
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Agreed (but why does your status say "medical student"? Don't we have a category for dental student?)
 
Kim, I bet the answer is the way OMFS fellows are trained. They graduate dental school, match into oral surgery, and spend their PGY-1 year in the hospital (scary, since they haven't done a single medical clerkship at that point!). At Columbia the majority of the internship is in anesthesia.

PGY-2 and PGY-3 years are spent in the second and third years of medical school, respectively, after which they earn an MD.

PGY-4 and PGY-5 are in the hospital as full oral surgery residents, training exclusively in that field (with the usual off-service rotations).

So if Shabu is indeed an OMFS fellow, he could be PGY2/3 and sitting in med school lectures right now, earning that MD.
 
Ahh...gotcha. Thanks for the clarification (although if you are correct, I would, if I were the poster above, list my status as Resident).

We had OMFS residents at my medical school but I never saw them during residency so didn't think about the training.
 
BlondeDocteur said:
Kim, I bet the answer is the way OMFS fellows are trained. They graduate dental school, match into oral surgery, and spend their PGY-1 year in the hospital (scary, since they haven't done a single medical clerkship at that point!). At Columbia the majority of the internship is in anesthesia.

PGY-2 and PGY-3 years are spent in the second and third years of medical school, respectively, after which they earn an MD.

PGY-4 and PGY-5 are in the hospital as full oral surgery residents, training exclusively in that field (with the usual off-service rotations).

So if Shabu is indeed an OMFS fellow, he could be PGY2/3 and sitting in med school lectures right now, earning that MD.
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Good catch.

DDS Columbia University 2007
MD Emory University 2010
Gen Surg 2011
Freedom 2013

Say hello to David Alfi and Aaron Park. PGY-3 OMFS/MSIII
 
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BlondeDocteur said:
Kim, I bet the answer is the way OMFS fellows are trained. They graduate dental school, match into oral surgery, and spend their PGY-1 year in the hospital (scary, since they haven't done a single medical clerkship at that point!).
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While I won't challenge the fact that going straight from dental school into residency isn't an incredible challenge (from my observation at least, I'm still a student), remember that dental students have had two years treating patients in an outpatient dental setting, and many dental schools do hospital or special care rotations. Considering that the majority of the intern year is spent on OMFS service seeing patients in a setting at least vaguely familiar to the dental school setting (as opposed to say, OB/GYN), that may ease the transition.

I'd definitely agree that rotating on anesthesia is mildly fear inducing as there are only a handful of schools that offer in depth anesthesia training to dental students.
 
BlondeDocteur said:
Kim, I bet the answer is the way OMFS fellows are trained. They graduate dental school, match into oral surgery, and spend their PGY-1 year in the hospital (scary, since they haven't done a single medical clerkship at that point!). At Columbia the majority of the internship is in anesthesia.

PGY-2 and PGY-3 years are spent in the second and third years of medical school, respectively, after which they earn an MD.

PGY-4 and PGY-5 are in the hospital as full oral surgery residents, training exclusively in that field (with the usual off-service rotations).

So if Shabu is indeed an OMFS fellow, he could be PGY2/3 and sitting in med school lectures right now, earning that MD.
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BD, a word of caution about how much you think you know about OMFS training, as opposed to how much you do know. Describing a residency program a year at a time, with an institutional n of 1, represents a very superficial understanding of any given specialty's training. I don't want to argue your opinions with you; they're yours and you're entitled to them. Just be wary of overestimating your knowledge of an oral & maxillofacial surgeon's education.
 
When I was an IM intern in NYC, we had so many social admissions that there was the "social pool"; any service that admitted had to take 1 day a month of being on-call for 1 social admission. Mt. Sinai has a combined MD OMFS program, and, one day, they were on the "hit list", and dutifully came and did a better admission than I ever expected. That guy didn't bitch, didn't complain, and didn't forget anything, and he was "only" a dentist. There was nothing scary about him; he certainly wasn't out of place AT ALL.
 
Yes, which is why I prefaced everything with "At Columbia..." rather than "so here's how you become an OMFS." The two OMFS fellows were in my rotation group throughout third year and I became good friends with them-- and I was quoting one directly when she described her terror at fielding calls in anesthesia, transporting patients and resuscitating them, etc without even the benefit of a single in-hospital experience in her dental school training. She thought it was an outrage that she was being asked to assume the responsibilites of a CA-1 when she was not even an MD.

Though I actually made a mistake above-- the PGY-4 year is a straight general surgery internship [at Columbia], then OMFS is years 5 and 6.
 
Do students in the 6-yr OMFS programs have to take step2CS and step3 to get their MD license? If there is no difference between 4-yr (DDS only) vs. 6-yr (MD/DDS) program in term of scope of practice, why have the latter?
 
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