Associate dentists
Most associate positions ask you to be a dentist and a small-business owner at the same time, then measure you on the first. Here the front desk, recall, hygiene and marketing systems are already built and run centrally, so the day you are paid for is the day you spend with patients. We do not compete for associates with a signing bonus. We compete on what you are producing in year three.
What you get
A signing bonus is paid once and changes nothing about the next ten years. What moves an associate's numbers is case acceptance, speed, and the confidence to keep work you would otherwise refer out — and those come from working beside people who already do it, with an in-house lab and a full-arch surgical programme in the same building. Associates here are meant to out-produce what they could anywhere else, and that is the number we are willing to be judged on.
Nobody outside the operatory sets treatment or a production quota against a chart. The management company does not employ clinicians to treat and does not bill for clinical work. That is a legal boundary as well as a value, and it is the question worth putting to every group you talk to.
The Canadian associate standard, written out in full before you sign, including how and when it is calculated and what comes off the top. No verbal understanding about lab or assistant costs that turns into a different number in month three.
A coordinator owns your column and your recall. Gaps get filled by a person whose job that is, rather than by you noticing at four o'clock that tomorrow is half empty.
Four practices means you can change buildings, hours or focus without changing employer, and without starting over on seniority or terms.
Scope
General practice is the base at every location. What sits on top of it depends on the building, and it is real rather than a referral relationship on paper.
The owner is a general dentist who still treats patients, so a clinical disagreement is a conversation with somebody who does the same job.
If you want to build toward implant or full-arch work, say so early. It is the one thing here that takes deliberate planning rather than just time, and it is easier to plan into a schedule than to retrofit.
The lab
The group runs its own digital lab, the 3D Studio. Full-arch prosthetics, implant and conventional crowns, night guards and dentures, designed and finished in house.
For an associate that is the difference between emailing a shade query into a building you have never seen and asking the person who made the case. Remakes get discussed rather than negotiated, and a case you are unsure about can be looked at before it is milled instead of after it is seated.
An outside lab is paid by the unit. Ours is not, so nothing has to be argued into being remade.
How it goes
What you want to be doing in three years, and whether the case mix here gets you there. If it does not, that is worth finding out on a call rather than in month six.
The building, the team, the equipment and the schedule you would actually inherit. Ask the hygienists what the place is like; we will leave the room.
You treat, the team works with you, and both sides learn more in a day than in three interviews. Paid at your rate, whatever happens next.
Percentage, schedule, lab and assistant arrangements, holiday, and how and when you get paid. Read it with your own adviser before you sign anything.
Asked most often
Associate positions here are not a buy-in, and nobody will imply one is coming to keep you. If an equity conversation ever makes sense, it will be a separate conversation with its own documents.
You do. There is no target sitting behind a chart and no non-clinician reviewing your diagnoses. If you want a second opinion on a case, there is a general dentist, an orthodontist and a denturist in the group to ask.
Filling it is somebody's job, and their performance is measured on it. Unbooked chair time is the group's own growth plan, so an empty column is a problem the organisation owns rather than one you are quietly blamed for.
Depends what you want. Surgical days can be assisted before they are led, and the owner treats patients rather than managing from an office. What is not on offer is somebody standing over you once you are competent.
Worth a conversation. Say where you are in the registration process and we will tell you plainly whether the timing works, rather than keeping you warm.
What it looks like in practice
Dr. Mark Wasylyk and Dr. Michael Webster run Tandem together. It is the clearest picture of what joining the group actually looks like: two dentists, both still treating, both named on the door, with the management, marketing and software carried centrally instead of by whoever has the least full column that week.
Get in touch
Tell us where you are licensed, what you want to be doing, and roughly when. A CV helps and a covering letter is not required.