Rising costs and payer challenges are making it increasingly difficult for solo dental practitioners to stay afloat, according to Jeffrey Carter, MD, DMD.
Dr. Carter is the founder of U.S. Dental Surgery Network, an organization providing oral surgery and general anesthesia services to dental practices. He recently joined the Becker's Dental + DSO Review podcast to discuss the trends he is following and the factors about dentistry that make him nervous.
Editor's note: Responses were lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: What about the dental industry makes you nervous?
Dr. Jeffrey Carter: [One thing] I'm nervous about is the future of the solo practitioner. When I went through dental school, that was kind of the gold standard. That's what everybody aspired to be because that was how dentistry was practiced. I think labor costs and especially the cost of healthcare insurance has made it nearly impossible for a solo practitioner to know everything there is to know about the business [and] about running an organization because it's gotten a lot more complicated over the years.
Q: Are a good number of dentists still striving for solo practice, or do you think that number has gone down?
JC: I think it's gone down. I've always said that the total cash dental practice is an urban legend. I think a lot of people come out of dental school and that's what they think they're getting into, and then they get out into the real world and they find that's really not how this industry is going. This industry is so driven and shaped by dental insurance, from the standpoint of the PPOs, and certainly now in my career, I see a lot more coverage on the government side through Medicare and Medicaid. So there's this huge population of people who need treatment, who are in those payer sectors, and somebody has to be the provider of choice for those particular people. If you're a solo practitioner needing to collect a huge fee for a service and that fee has to be three times what the average is, or four times what the Medicaid value is, it's very difficult to stay alive in that situation.