When I was still in dental school, I used to think that dentists were doing more procedures nowadays, and the need for specialists was dying out due to the abundance of CE. Now I actually think that the pay gap between GP and specialist is increasing not decreasing. Talk to all the old dentists around you and ask them about their dental school experiences. They all seemed to do more root canals and surgical extractions than current dental school students do fillings. Their number of apical surgeries are in line with RCT’s performed by todays grads. Today, dentists are taught how to be safe and avoid litigation leading to less venturing into the realms of specialty procedures. Insurance and DSO’s are also incentivizing a model that utilizes specialists more frequently than the past.
The GPs that are making the most money, generally are not doing so out of their own production. It is usually due to multiple practice ownership, which is just as accessible to specialists.
Sorry. Off topic, but ......
I see the opposite happening. What I see is more and more in debt new grads and dentists with DS, practice debt feeling the pressure to not refer anything out of their practice. That's just revenue leaving your office. Look at all the posts here re: young soon to be dentists wanting to know if programs teach aligners, implants, molar endos, surgical extractions, etc.
As for the discussion above re:
@schmoob and
@FutureDent020 . That's a nice example of what each side feels and thinks regarding dental procedures being triaged and referred by the GP. The politics of referrals is a whole other discussion. What I can say is when a specialist is busy. Has plenty of referral sources ... they can be picky about who they work with. That is a LUXURY. In a saturated area ... if a GP does not like how a specialist handled a situation (or vise versa) ... there will be a line of hungry specialists ready to pounce on a possible new referral source. That's REALITY. Like it or not.
True story. I'm good friends with my primary care MD. I went to see him regarding a small benign cyst on my chest. He felt confident he could excise the cyst. As he got into the cyst ... he realized that the cyst was larger than he thought. He sutured the area up and gave me a referral to see a dermatologist. My friend had good intentions, but would I have been better served if I was referred to the Derm originally? That's the issue. The GPs have the ethical responsibility to triage their patients and decide whether they or a referral to a specialist is best for the patient.
A GP has to make this decision AFTER they have spent money (marketing, paying staff, office overhead, Dr. time, etc, etc,) to see this patient. And now they are going to send this patient (revenue) to a specialist? It's a tough balancing act for the GP. Specialists do not have to make these triage decisions.