From front desk turnover to a DentalPost survey that shows 31% of hygienists plan to retire within six years, staffing remains a top challenge for dental practices and groups across the country.
At the Chicago Dental Society 2025 Midwinter Meeting, two leaders shared how their dental groups have adjusted to staffing shortages by thinking outside the box. One group completely eliminated their in-person front desk staff.
Dr. Viren Patel, CEO of Smile Obsession
Dr. Viren Patel.
"We have a unique model where we eliminated front-desk roles within the dental clinic. We don't even have phones in the practice. Instead, we have a centralized support center that handles all phone calls, text messages, and email inquiries; patient communications; insurance verification and billing; and office supply inventory management.
"When patients schedule an appointment, they receive a link to complete their intake forms online. When they come into the practice, they check in via a kiosk in the waiting room.
"We pay our dental assistants more than the norm to assist with the check-in and checkout process, including scheduling future appointments. That's helped with DA retention.
"We train our dentists on the revenue cycle process, including how to decipher insurance benefits and co-pays. The dentists discuss the treatment and associated costs with the patients, which increases patient loyalty.
"Through technology, cross-training, and centralization, we eliminated a lot of overhead; increased earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization; and reduced staff turnover. It works very well."
Dr. Rute Ramalho, VP, strategy and operations at TAG – The Aspen Group
"We had to change our hygiene business model significantly during the past few years. Our hygienists are paid above market rate, and hourly wages went up about 10% since 2020. We created career paths for associate hygienists to become lead hygienists and developed more leadership and recruiting roles for hygienists.
Dr. Rute Ramalho.
"Thirty percent of recent hygiene hires are part time. There are a lot of hygienists who work Monday to Thursday in private practice and supplement their income by working for us Friday and Saturday. We extended our healthcare benefits package to include part-time hygienists who work at least 18 hours a week.
"We also partnered with onDiem, a staffing agency that helps mitigate gaps in our hygiene schedules.
"We've also invested in technology to help our hygienists, including Denti.ai for hands-free perio charting and lasers for bacterial management and soft-tissue lesions. Hygiene students learn about these technologies in school, so it's helped us recruit more hygienists too."
Beth Gaddis is the editor in chief at Planet DDS, a dental technology company specializing in cloud-based practice management systems, digital imaging, and dental marketing services. Previously, Gaddis was the marketing director for two large dental service organizations. Prior to entering the dental industry, Gaddis was a journalist for 16 years in a variety of roles, including as a TV news producer at the CBS affiliate in Boston. You can connect with Gaddis on LinkedIn.
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