how many people are required to support a healthy dental practice?

[docpun]

i mean the local population required for a successful dental practice.......ratio of patients to a dentist

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[Shingo123]

how many people are required to support a healthy dental practice???

I am no Dentist, but even I can see the vagueness of this question. I would imagine it depends on what you consider a healthy practice.

My dentist hired a secretary to manage the front desk and set up appointments. Aside from that he is the only one who works at his practice, and you can definitely call his practice a healthy one.

I imagine there is also cases where a Dentist could run a practice on his own, but I would also imagine that it would be much more efficient to hire at least one person to help out.

 

[Daurang]

A frontdesk person and yourself for a barebone high-profit practice.

 

[Turnerjo13]

The typical dental school answer to every question is: It depends. The dentist to patient ratio is a very complex problem with many factors. Local poplation number of dentists, the age makeup and income of the population, average education of the population urban, rural, office overhead, type of dental practice etc etc... All of theses factors and many more can contribute to how man patients are needed to support a dental practice. Very complex problem.

 

[Cold Front]

The magic number for generals is about 1,500 for most dentists out there. Some need less, some need more - specially medicaid offices.

For specialists, pedo and ortho operate under high volume settings, at least 2,000+ active patients to keep the flow going. Endo need referrals so they don't have active patients, rarely a patient goes back to the same endodontist after they get their RCT's, same goes for pros. Perio i am not sure about, they have hygienists for prophies and recalls - so I would imagine they don't need that high either.

 

[charlestweed]

For specialists, pedo and ortho operate under high volume settings, at least 2,000+ active patients to keep the flow going. Endo need referrals so they don't have active patients, rarely a patient goes back to the same endodontist after they get their RCT's, same goes for pros. Perio i am not sure about, they have hygienists for prophies and recalls - so I would imagine they don't need that high either.

For ortho, 700-800 active patients (approx 25-30 new starts/month) is a very good number.

 

[Dental PS]

To make it even more vague I'll add this: It depends on your marketing, location, and the quality of other practices in the area too. I've opened almost 20 practices with different groups of dentists and I assure you that becoming a marketing guru (often trial and error) will allow you to get by with a smaller patient pool. For example, I opened a practice in a strip mall in a small planned community with the only grocery store, gas station, Target within 15 miles. That office was booked out before we even opened the doors and profitable in 3 months. That's a healthy office. Like others said before: It depends.

 

[IWantSmile]

i mean the local population required for a successful dental practice.......ratio of patients to a dentist

I learned during my last undergrad final paper regarding the ratio of patients to dentist. (the data compared the State of Maine with the Sate of Califonia.) " In the Maine Department of Human Services Office of Health Data , 792 dentists are in the State of Maine in year 2009 and the population of the Maine is 1,274,923 (1) where as in California the total population in current is 33,871,648 and 23000 active dentists in CA (2) . In terms of comparison, the ratio of dentist: patient in Maine is 1: 1609 vs. in California is 1: 1472. "
In terms of these ratios, DDS/DMD must work day and night to meet the need of patients. Can you imagine that!!

 

[Daurang]

I learned during my last undergrad final paper regarding the ratio of patients to dentist. In terms of comparison, the ratio of dentist: patient in Maine is 1: 1609 vs. in California is 1: 1472. "
In terms of these ratios, DDS/DMD must work day and night to meet the need of patients. Can you imagine that!!

Not quite that simple. Maybe only 50% of that 1:1500 ratio is seeing a dentist regularly, which mean the ratio is more like 1:750. Then 30% of these people have DMO/Dentical plan you don't wanna take which reduces it to 1:500. That comes out to 1.5 patients per day per dentist. But if the ratio for Maine and Cali is about the same, why is there a shortage in Maine but excess in Cali?