The American Way of Dentistry: How dentists think.

Dentists earn their living in a way that's markedly different from the way doctors do. Somewhere between 80 percent and 85 percent of American dentists practice as owner-operators, as compared with only about 20 percent of physicians. Group practices, which are common for doctors, are rare for dentists—about 63 percent work solo, 20 percent practice with one other dentist, and 17 percent are in business with two or more dentists. A dentist's "income" is ... Full Story »

Posted by Kaizar Campwala - via Slate , Tom Friedman

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Review

Kaizar Campwala
4.1
by Kaizar Campwala - Sep. 30, 2009

In reviewing many thousands of articles on NewsTrust (including hundreds on Health Care), I don't think I've ever come across a story on dentistry. Based on this piece alone, I think this series has a lot of promise.

Indeed, fear of the dentist is so prevalent that there are several competing measures of this anxiety. (The Corah Dental Anxiety Scale and the Kleinknecht Dental Fear Survey seem to be most widely used.) According to a study in the February 1998 JADA, “When the data are extrapolated to the U.S. population, they translate to an approximate 45 million people being very nervous or terrified about visiting the dentist; 23 million avoiding dental care because of fear; and almost 23 million willing to go to the dentist more frequently if general anesthesia and conscious sedation were more readily available.”

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Kaizar's Rating

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4.5
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