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Professional Courtesy Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, FAGD Editorial Director, Dentaltown Magazine

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Care and Feeding of Associates


Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, FAGD
Editorial Director,
Dentaltown Magazine
 I believe there are two types of associate dentists working today: “employees” and “future partners.” For the most part employee dentists work for either a corporate megapractice or a private practice with no promise of future ownership. I have been an employee dentist in my career, and it was one of the best jobs I’ve ever had in this profession. “Future partners” are the dentists who are hired on a trial basis with the promise of future partnership/ownership in the practice “if everything works out.” This too can be a terrific arrangement. My first bit of advice to both parties in these situations: be sure that everyone is clear as to which group you belong. It is a great disservice to hire someone who thinks he or she might own the place one day, but you have no intention of allowing that person to do so.

If you are hoping to retire in 10 years and you are thinking about hiring an associate to transition out of your practice, put everything in writing from the beginning. Let this associate know you are serious and start the relationship off on the right foot. How much do you think associates will care about your practice and patients if they think it might be theirs one day? On the other hand, I have known many dentists hired with the promise of a future partnership only to toil year after year waiting for the owner to come up with terms and a price, and a plan! Don’t worry that “things might not work out” – any good plan will have plenty of escape clauses. In fact, a complete partnership should have plans in place for the demise of the partnership, God forbid. This would be the business equivalent of a prenuptial agreement.

If you invest time and money developing a transition, and the first associate decides to move on, you can use the same documents with the next candidate, only needing to update numbers as they change. If you want to look at it from another point of view, imagine you have the associate of your dreams and you want to make him a partner, eventually buying your practice outright. You have been working together for three years and you never put an agreement together. The associate now has you over a barrel because you know how hard it will be to find another perfect fit. In fact, many statistics indicate it will get much harder just to find a candidate to respond to your ad.

For these reasons, I advocate a generous approach to the care and feeding of your associate dentist. We work very hard owning our practices, often building them from scratch. It is difficult to think that someone can just come into this great business and not have to suffer. I believe firmly that this attitude poisons the relationship and dooms it from the start. There are many stories from both sides of this equation that have appeared in the message boards on Dentaltown.com, and like all business arrangements, both sides must be satisfied.

Earlier I mentioned that I have been an employee dentist and it was one of the best jobs in dentistry. In fact, I was an employee three different times before opening a practice from scratch seven years ago. My first experience was as an associate to two owner dentists in Albany, New York. If I had not moved to Phoenix, Arizona, I would have considered a partnership as I enjoy a group setting. My first job in Phoenix was at a corporate dental practice and it simply served as a transition to learn the area and decide if a life in the desert was for me. My final associateship, before starting a scratch practice with my wife, was with Dr. Howard Farran (the same guy whose article you read two pages ago). I loved that job because Howard provided a great environment for an associate to prosper. The arrangement was simple: associates received 25 percent of adjusted production, malpractice insurance, paid CE in and out of town, lab fees paid by practice at 100 percent and whatever materials you needed. All in all, this was a fair and generous arrangement.

I recently met a dentist at the AGD meeting who was there on her own dime because the owner doc wouldn’t pay for her CE. She also had to pay her own malpractice and lab bill, and she was compensated on a percentage of collections. I find this outrageous. Why would an owner doctor put up barriers to hire an educated employee? I think a real creative owner would require more CE than the state minimum for their associates. Remember, an associate’s dentistry is a reflection of an owner’s reputation.

I must make special mention of this issue of collections. Paying an associate based on collections creates and environment of mistrust. The associate will constantly wonder if Marge at the front desk is logging the collections properly. Don’t turn associates’ paychecks into a math problem. Make it simple and pay on production. If your office is not collecting in the high 90th percentile, you have bigger problems to fix.

As for the other fringe benefits, I’ve heard owner dentists say, “I have to pay for this stuff, they should too.” When you do it, doctor, it is a business expense that comes out of the practice; when your employee pays for these things it comes out of their checking account. It is not the same thing.

Please consider my message as a gift to associates and owner dentists alike. Failure to follow this advice will leave some offices without a successor, and that is unfortunate. Please share your associate stories – good and bad – online at Dentaltown.com. If you want to send me a kind note, use e-mail: tom@dentaltown.com.
Dentaltown Magazine
September 2025
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