Part
01
of two
Part
01
Barriers and Opportunities for Dental Graduate Students
Comments about the barriers and opportunities regarding joining private practices versus dental service organizations have been entered into columns B and C of the attached spreadsheet. They include both comments from the perspective of dental graduate students as well comments from the perspective of professionals.
Private Practices
- Dental graduate students can obtain useful clinical and business knowledge as well as personal mentorship if they join a good private practice with seasoned dentists.
- Private practices are far more in number than DSOs, so it is easier for dental graduate students to find a private practice in a place where they desire to live.
- New dental associates are often made to start out with limited patients and simple procedures at private practices, thereby hindering their proficiency.
- Dental graduate students who join private practices are expected to earn less income until they are able to build a stable client base of their own. Also, most private practices don’t provide healthcare benefits.
- Private practices typically operate as a tight-knit family. This enables a lot of communication which promotes growth to take place between the owners and the employees who join them.
- Private practices provide fewer career advancement opportunities for professionals who join them.
- Private practices can hardly cope with the complexity and rising cost of providing insurance and healthcare benefits for professionals who join them.
- Professionals who join private practices have their income tied to the amount of work they do and it declines when they are not working.
Dental Service Organizations (DSOs)/Corporate Dental Offices
- Since all administrative tasks are typically handled by the corporate team, dental graduate students who join DSOs can focus on treating patients, paying off their student debt with a steady income, and enhancing their dental skills.
- Different DSOs operate with different business models, so dental graduate students would learn different skills depending on which DSO they join.
- Different DSOs also have different clinical support. Dental graduate students should determine the type of dentists they want to be and find out if they can be accommodated.
- DSOs are quite busy and efficient. They provide a great opportunity for dental graduate students to learn about the inside operations of successful and profitable DSO practice.
- DSOs usually provide comprehensive benefits packages. This is an incentive for dental graduate students who are accepting their first job.
- DSOs can offer the flexibility of relocation to professionals who join them in order to practice in other locations in the US or progress to other career positions.
- Many DSOs hire part-time and traveling professional dentists and this gives them more flexibility and options to continue practicing.
- Joining a DSO provides professionals with the opportunity to just show up, do dentistry work, and leave.
- Professionals who join DSOs generally have lower overall earning opportunities than their counterparts who join private practices.