What Is Walmart's Inelastic Demand For Dentistry?

Once a dentist has graduated and passed all exams, making it legal for him or her to practice dentistry, the dentist faces many decisions as far as businesses, practices and firms, partnerships, and expenses. For as long as dentistry has existed, private dental practices have outnumbered the amount of dental chains. Recently, private chains have begun to take over private practices within the medical and pharmaceutical fields (Clark). Walgreens, Walmart’s Pharmacy, CVS, and Novant Health, all chains, have taken over the private, personal pharmacies and medical offices that once existed (O’Leary). Private Chains tend to have a higher cost for patients and only offer treatments that insurance does not cover (Clark). Dentists see what happened

A service that has inelastic demand, provides ministrations that each person needs (Hallows). It also means that the demand for dentistry will not fluctuate depending on the price. All people need the dentist, therefore, even if the prices change, the demand for the service will not. Charters and partnerships, two other option dentists look into when starting up their own practice, can heavily influence the way a practice functions. Opening up a practice with a partner or multiple partners will lower the overhead for each dentist included in the firm. Dr. O’Leary explains in an example, that if a single dentist opens a practice alone, the overhead for that dentist will come to about 75%, meaning that for every dollar the dentistry receives, the dentist will only profit by about twenty-five cents. However, if the dentist partnered with two or three other dentists, the overhead would reduce to 50% allowing for each dentist to profit by fifty cents for every dollar made (O’Leary). Partners can use operating charters, along with their partnership agreements, to reach a consensus on how to run their business in a non-legally binding manner (“THE

The gross billings per dentist per year averages to about $646,440 for a general dentist and $857,100 for a specialist (“Income”). After the dentist accounts for costs and expenses, the average income of a private practitioner or general dentist comes to to about $180,950 per year, while the average specialist makes around $283,900 per year. The reasons for the difference in salary come from the fact that in order to become a specialist, a dentist must attend further schooling and training (“Income”). Becoming a specialist not only offers the reward of a higher paycheck, but it also comes with the benefit of gaining knowledge in different fields of dentistry which the dentist can then use to help patients with an even broader spectrum of dental