The Business behind owning a dental practice?

[LittleFishBigPond]

Hello,

Tldr:"Basically for practicing dentists or pre-dents how did you learn the business side to owning a practice? Did you learn in college and apply that knowledge later,take continued education courses after completing dental school while working as an associate, or did you learn through experience when opening your practice? Is this something taught in dental school curriculum?"


For a while I teetered back and forth trying to decide whether to pursue a career in business or one in medicine. It was then that I realized dentistry may be a great career for me as it provides the perfect balance between the two career paths. However, being a first year in college having just completed my 1st quarter, I am struggling a bit with how to go about learning the information/skills necessary to be able to manage my own practice in the future.

I am currently a pre-bio major, however I now realize that while this major will seamlessly allow me complete all of the prerequisites for most dental programs, it will not necessarily provide me with the skills necessary to run a business. I assume that a science related major is the norm (although not necessary) when trying to enter this field, but how does one pick up the skills needed for the business aspect of things?

I'm doing well so far as a pre-bio major (3.72 although I'm only a first year lol) and I'm interested in the subject matter but I'm not sure if I should switch to an Econ major (my school doesn't have business) while taking the dental prerequisites at the cost of lowering my grades ( I don't really excel in these subjects) or take accounting/ Econ courses while remaining a bio major? Which still may impact my grades although not as much as option A.

Basically for practicing dentists or pre-dents how did you learn the business side to owning a practice? Did you learn in college and apply that knowledge later,take continued education courses after completing dental school while working as an associate, or did you learn through experience when opening your practice? Is this something taught in dental school curriculum? I've read the thread 'lets buy a practice' and I'm wondering where one learns all this?

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[DentalDoc2016]

I think you will find that most dentists don't get any real business experience until they are in the working world, and at that point they kind of learn on the fly from the dentist they associate under. Of course they could also start from scratch and learn via trial and error on their own. This area is education is very minimal in the dental world -- there are CE courses run by companies that specifically teach dentists how to run an effective business model (but often these are not even run by dentists at all - so how much do you want to listen to them lots of pros and cons)........so basically there is not really a time or place where one learns all of this, you kind of just grab and pick knowledge where you can and roll with the punches.

 

[OhioDMD]

Keep your major. If you want to supplement take an accounting class or two. That way you should be able to understand a balance sheet, profit & loss, depreciation, cost of goods sold and the time value of money.