What to Pay an Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeon

Daily-rate or salary guarantee

Best for: A new associate, or a referral base still building

A flat guaranteed amount per clinical day or year, sometimes as a floor under a percentage formula (the associate is paid the higher of the two).

Trade-off: You carry the risk while the referral base fills, rather than the associate. In a specialty fed by GP referrals rather than by your own recall, that risk is real and largely outside the associate's control in the first months.

When to use: You're handing over a caseload that isn't yet full, or opening a role where the referral base is still forming.

Percentage of production or collections

Best for: An established referral base and a full caseload

A share of what the surgeon produces or collects. Surgical case fees and any facility/anesthesia billing make the production-versus-collections distinction matter more here than in general practice.

Trade-off: Aligns pay with output, but pays badly against a thin referral base, and complex cases with staged billing can make early months look worse than the work performed.

When to use: The referral base is established and the candidate is confident in their own case volume.

Define production versus collections in writing, including how anesthesia/facility fees are counted. Ambiguity here is a common source of associate disputes.

Employed salary with a stated partnership track

Best for: Competing against practice ownership, which is the real alternative

A salary or daily rate, plus a written outline of what a buy-in would look like and when it becomes available.

Trade-off: It commits you to a conversation you may prefer to defer, and a track you outline should be one you mean. The upside is that it competes with the option most OMS actually take.

When to use: You're recruiting someone you want to keep long-term rather than for a year or two, which is the more common goal given how OMS referral relationships take time to build.

What is the average oral surgeon salary?

The national median is $352,220 a year, with the middle 50% between $204,610 and $428,710 (BLS OEWS, SOC 29-1022, May 2025). Most OMS own or partner in practices, so those figures blend clinical pay with practice profit — an employed-associate offer typically sits toward the lower part of the band.

Why is the published range so wide?

Because it mixes two different things. The band runs from a 10th-percentile figure of $86,250 up to $622,640+ at the 90th percentile (BLS OEWS, SOC 29-1022, May 2025), and the upper end largely reflects practice ownership income rather than what an employed associate is paid.

What percentage of production should I offer an OMS associate?

This page won't give you a number for that — there's no dental-specific source for one we'd stand behind. General-dentist associate percentages don't transfer; case values, OR time, and anesthesia billing all differ for oral surgery. Build the offer from your own case values and caseload, and use the BLS band as a sanity check on where it lands.

Is there good state-by-state salary data for oral surgeons?

It's thinner than for general dentistry. OMS is a small occupation nationally, so BLS publishes a state-level estimate for only a handful of states rather than all fifty. The oral surgeon salary page lists every state with a published figure — use your state's if it's there, and the national band otherwise.