I am sad to say that I just wrote a huge post for this thread and lost my entry by mistake since I'm kind of new on this message board...
All I can say is that I was lured into signing a contract in December of 2006 with Sears Dental which goes by the name of DentalCare Partners and DentalWorks.
I was blinded by the beauty of a brand new office they opened. Let me tell you that they are a Dental Mill. As a new dentist you are required to see all walk-ins, emergencies plus your scheduled patients with one assistant to your disposal. The corporate manager assigned to my facility barely looked beyond the front desk and would rarely send another girl back to clean up after the main assistant if we were running behind. They staff the doctors with new assistants just out of school that are virtually untrained. Good luck keeping up with a schedule with lack of assistance! You are expected to see all walk-ins, so it's not a surprise when you are running behing schedule that your "scheduled" patient still sitting in the waiting room waiting walks out MAD! Corporate expects you to do just about everything whether you are qualified in full mouth surgeries or not... Oh sure, they'll say... don't do a surgery if you're uncomfortable, but if you refer too many complex case patients to outside specialists you will lose your job! The hours of operation are terrible. I would arrive at 9:20 in the morning to go through charts and give a huddle before 10:00 AM and the office was open until 8:00PM at night. Almost all days were without a lunch or break. My one assistant was more overworked than me and so I also cleaned rooms and instruments of which I did not get paid to do. I had a hygienist only one day a week and so I was required to do just about all of the perio unless it was advanced.
They have a $49.00 special for an exam, full mouth series and adult prophy. Patients would come in with mounds of calculus demanding that you clean their teeth right then and there. Some patients would comply when you informed them that they need scaling and root planing by the hygienist. Others would scream and yell and make my life miserable because they came for their $49.00 special.
I worked for this Corporation all for a beginning percentage of 26% of collection and it goes upward from there depending upon your production. (maximum 32%)
This past week I requested a few days off at the end of march and the beginning of April on my children's spring break. In addition, I took an authoritative stand with the corporate office manager assigned to my facility to get the office running better. However, I am a female dentist and she did not like that one bit. I was out of the office on thursday and friday and on friday I received a 6 line letter stating that I WAS TERMINATED IN MY POSITION WITHOUT CAUSE. Maybe it's my ego speaking, but I happen to be a damn good dentist who only took this job because I was looking at opening my own practice and the expense involved and someone contacted me from their corporation for this position.
Think twice before considering a job with Sears... If dentistry is your only life and can be in the office 10 plus hours a day, then maybe it will work for you. You have to be fairly good in all oral surgery cases also which just isn't my thing... I like cosmetic and restorative dentistry.
My advice is Beware and Be Cautious before signing a contract with this corporation!!!
Getting "fired" from there was probably the best thing that will ever happen to your dental career.
The problem with so many dental chains and even many partnerships/associateships is that more often than not there is someone incharge who is so paranoid about the cash issue that they completely loose sight of the big picture.
Relatively speaking, there's ALOT of mouths out there, and not enough dentists to take care of them all. Some people get so paranid about their practice that they start doing irrational things, like trying to sqeeze an associate out of a few dollars here and there, trying to force treatment on patients, and being more aware of the patients account than their mouths. Bottom line, the vast majority of patients are aware of alot of this, and beit in the form of unhappy staff, to a "rushed" feeling in the chair, they take note, and often won't tell you, but rather just leave the practice and move on. I like to think of the patient visit(s) in the following way, the easiet visit to get them in the chair is the 1st visit, the hardest is getting them to come back for the 2nd. If they come back, you've got a dependable patient, because they're comfortable with you and that more often than not is more important to office hours, your fees, what insurance companies you may participate with, etc.
Chains and some partnerships/associateships can totally loose this perspective and thats when the trouble arises, employees will leave, patients will leave, the stress goes up on the owner, you try harder and to patients into the elective treatment, more patients leave, more stress, more problems, you start taking lesser and lesser paying insurance plans to compensate for patients leaving/not accepting larger treatment plans, you start working more (and crazier) hours than you want, and your personal life suffers.
If you want a good barometer of an office type that will generally have both happy patients and a happy staff, find one where the employee turnover is basically non-existant. I bet that you'll see a very high patient retention rate at those practices too. I doubt you'll see any of that with the chains and WHEN (unfortunately it's a "when" and not an "if") "walmart dental" opens
😱 If you want to practice that way, feel free to. I don't, and I think the vast majority of our profession doesn't want to see it happen either.
One last thing, that 26% of collections they were paying you, they were realistically making a solid 20%+ themselves, since all but the most inefficient of offices will have the overhead under 65%(many close to 50%) and the corporate cost cutting mentality of that chain I'm sure had the overhead as low as possible. As a practice owner, I would strongly advise (and this would be at my expense as a practice owner) that when you're looking at potential places to work, and the compensation topic arise, if you're not getting in the mid-30% range of collections, look elsewhere!
I'm sorry you lost your job, but with the way things were going it sounds like it was the best thing that could have happened. Can you report their shoddy practices to your local board? A company that punishes you for referring beyond your capabilities seems wrong. At very least it seems unprofessional. It's a good thing that you got out actually. I just went to a legal seminar with our state organization's attorney and she made it very clear that the company that pressures you to do HACK dentistry is NOT accountable when the POOP hits the fan. Companies like that will hang you out to dry when something goes wrong. You're nothing more than an asset to them; A pawn that takes the hit for the QUEEN. That person was YOU, but not anymore. I hope you soon find something that sets you on the path to practicing the way YOU want to.
