Dr. Alan Paradis: Let’s talk some about how the modern world of dental practice impacts dental specialties and specifically tell me about what corporate dental practices are and how they interface with proper care of patients.
Dr. David McFadden: I don’t think it’s any secret that dentistry is a lucrative profession. In the United States people have recognized that in investors have a hard time in making money in more traditional investments. So there’s been a large push now for corporate dentistry and that is where outside investors non dentist outside investors will start a corporate dental chain and hire people on a profit based idea where incentives and we find that to be counterproductive to quality dentistry.
Dr. Alan Paradis: Well and let’s talk specifically about the people they hire. So if a corporate entity starts a dental business. Leases out office space in shopping centres and then hires dentists to work for them, it’s clear that there’s an immediately need to generate profit for corporate investors. The problem in dentistry comes is that dental care is a highly personalized service that can only be administered by an individual doctor relating to an individual patient. There’s no amount of corporate effort that can change the need for that. However, the corporations are in an excellent position nowadays to hire young dentists to work for them and put pressure on them to generate dental treatment and that’s why any of you patients that have been to one of these corporate offices, quickly realize that you are being sold services that you may or may not need and this is really the essence of the breakdown of the entire doctor patient relationship. The doctor should be under pressure from the individual patient to provide for their needs and is his duty to serve the patient’s needs, not only in providing the proper service but in providing education to that patient. The corporate model is an antithesis to this.
