Pros
PDS is an excellent company that provides many advantages for oral and maxillofacial surgeons. The main advantage being that it provides an opportunity for you to focus on what you know: surgery and caring for patients. Billing, front office issues, hiring/firing, staffing, advertising, and many of the other stresses of private practice are all covered with PDS.
Also working for PDS your salary can be significantly higher than the average private practice oral surgeon. This is mainly because PDS allows you to be more efficient. As mentioned, you no longer need to worry about many of the time consuming business orientated decisions and can focus all of your time treating and caring for patients. Another reason your salary will be higher is because PDS is an extremely fast growing company. The more offices that develop the more offices you can provide oral surgery for and the more patients you can care for.
I’ve found that PDS isn’t one of the other corporate companies pushing numbers and production. I have never had a conversation pushing production with those who have hired me. I think this speaks volumes. Our goal is to treat the patient in the best possible way and everything else seems to fall into place. There's definitely a patient first atmosphere within the company.
As an oral surgeon you'll treat patients with the referring dentist present in the same office. Treatment planning, referrals and communication are obviously much better in a PDS setting than private practice. This makes patient care so much better. Also, unlike other corporate companies PDS has the general dentist have ownership in the dental offices. These dentists care about their about their patients and are in the offices long term. This is reflected in their treatment planning.
Basically when I talk with my oral surgery colleagues about my job with PDS they always ask "are there any job openings?"
Cons
An area that was initially difficult for me was patient follow up. This has been difficult as a specialist working in multiple offices. Developing strong relationships with general dentists and having them help with the follow up has helped alleviate this problem. Also, the fact that PDS is growing so fast there are multiple offices nearby that I work at which makes follow up easier for patients if I need to see a patient for follow up.
This career option is for the private practice oral surgeon. Oral surgeons who are interested in the broader scope of oral and maxillofacial surgery will need to supplement their PDS careers with trauma call at a nearby hospital.
