I’ve noticed in my area (a relatively poor section of L.A.) there are an insane amount of dentists. I can walk outside the door of my apartment complex and there are 3 dentists’ offices literally within plain sight, and more at every single corner.
I just did a distance search on yellowpages.com and the results were absolutely astounding. Within 5 miles of my zip code there are:
27 Starbucks
39 McDonald’s
58 Bail Bondsmen
88 Check Cashing Services
799 Dentists
800 dentists within 5 miles… assuming that’s a circle with a 5 mile radius, it would be ~78.5 square miles totalling more than 10 dentists per square mile!
Did you check the addresses? I’d guess a lot of them are just 800 numbers (in every phone book). You call them and they set you up with a local dentist.
OR
Probably more likely that each dentist is listed individually even if they are part of a group plus the group itself my have a listing. If you’re near a downtown area I suppose I could see that happening. But 800 still seems high.
They are not 800 numbers, as it’s a distance search and they all show specific addresses within 5 miles.
Yeah, this part is correct. There are some “dental clinics” and “dental group” listings that have multiple dentists listed at the same address. The point still stands that there are a lot of freaking dentists around here though, and I want to know why!
I’ve noticed that there seems to be dental office on just about every corner in my neighborhood, so I’ve wondered the same thing – how can the neighborhood support so many dentists?
Yeah but that’s why I included some other search results for comparison - especially bail bondsmen and check cashing services, which are notorious indicators of “yup, you’re in the ghetto now.” (there are more than twice as many check cashing places within 5 miles of here as there are McDonald’s - abysmal)
Other than check cashing places, the businesses I associate with poor areas are hair & nail salons and storefront ministries. They’re like the economic equivalent of weeds that are the only thing to grow in barren areas.
Good idea - 90210 in Beverly Hills (which is actually no more than a 15-20 minute drive from here, yet a world of difference) shows 965 dentists within 5 miles and a downtown L.A. zip code, 90015 shows 658 dentists.
So maybe it’s not really a ghetto thing after all.
It’s that way in Chicago too. I live in an area, that’s not so great and I got 5 dentists within 2 blocks. As you head west there are more dentists and the neighborhood gets worse.
After 3 blocks east you hit the Yuppies and NO dentists all the way into Lincoln Park
It’s amazing.
The one possiblity I’m thinking is that the office space is cheaper so new dentists start out in poorer areas OR the other things I noticed, not one is a single dentist. Usually there are three names or more.
I’m thinking they are dentists with multiple offices. A lot of poor people in my neighborhood are on public aid, so at least the dentist knows he’ll get paid.
I vote for “low rent.” Even when they aren’t in the ghetto, it seems like dentists set up shop in some strange places. But you only go to the dentist a couple of times a year, so I guess having an odd location doesn’t affect business much.
The low rent thing is odd; dentists - even low-end ones - make a lot of money, and often come from rich(er) families to be able to go through medical/dental school in the first place. Dentists in my area will often buy whole buildings in an established area in order to set up their new practice or one for their kid. You’d think that a lot more less profitable businesses would snap up those cheap locations while big profit ones could locate anywhere.
My WAG: poor people get much worse dental care as kids and end up spending more time at the dentists than wealthy folks. Also low rent might be a consideration.
How do you go about finding all the dentists in a five mile radius? I just googled dentists in Montreal and found a number of sites, no one of which includes more than a handful of dentists and no one of which includes the practice where I go that has four dentists and a couple of de-tartarers.
As far as I am aware there are only a handful of dentists within five miles of my house and they are mostly found in the poorer neighborhood adjacent to mine.
After factoring in dental school loans, paying employees and other costs, most dentists don’t make ALOT of money. And with managed care companies paying them, they make less than they used to. Plus, many doctors work in medical buildings where overhead can be spread out amongst many doctors. Most dentists work alone or with just 1 or 2 partners. Finally, every dollar they save on rent is another dollar in their pockets, so why pay more?
It’s probably that in the ghetto they’re more obvious. In Beverly Hills or downtown they’re more likely to be in some kind of high-rise professional building, where they’re not going to have a gigantic sign in front, whereas in the ghetto it’s more likely a storefront with a big set of choppers painted on the window.