This is indeed the case at most of the dental practices here in CA. Even with medicaid patients, dentists still don’t have a jam-packed schedule every day. In addition to working at their own offices, some dentists have to work part time 1-2 days a week at the corp to keep themselves busy. My sister has never hired a hygienist. And that’s how she’s able to buy her own office building + several rental properties.
Should do better marketing? How? There are probably more dental offices here in CA than there are gas stations.
Yes, if your office is beyond its maximum capacity…solidly booked 5-6 days/wk…..there are too many patients for you to handle by yourself…. you don’t even have time to go to the bathroom, then having a hygienist should help. This would be a good situation to have. Every dentist’s dream is to have a super busy practice like this. If I were a general dentist who has such successful practice, I wouldn’t mind paying the hygienist $110-120k so I could produce 10x more by doing all the high productive procedures.
When you have your own practice, you will see that not everything runs ideally. There are patients who don’t show up or call to cancel at the last minute because teeth are not the #1 priority in their life. There are plenty of posts on the dentaltown forum where the owner dentists complain about their hygiene schedule falling apart and they still have to pay their hygienist a full day salary. Once you promise to give your hygienist 1hr per patient, it’ll be hard for you to squeeze in more patients (in order to make up for the no shows) and make your hygienist works harder for the same pay. Once you give your hygienist a full time job, it’s hard to cut her days/hours. There are labor laws you have to follow etc.
Here is one of the many discussions among the GP’s on the dental town forum whether to hire a hygienist or not.
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