Hygiene and Practice Production

Dental hygiene, as already mentioned, is the second largest and only other production center in dental practices. Yet, the dental hygiene department has been marginalized to a large degree in regard to reaching potential for practice production. So why hasn’t dental hygiene been a major focus in dental practices to increase practice production while expanding beneficial services to patients? Here are a few of the commonly held beliefs that have actually proven to be counterproductive to advancing the business benefits of dental hygiene:

1. For many years, dental hygienists were seen as the people who “clean teeth.” In fact, the dental hygiene appointment is typically referred to as a cleaning. This word alone tends to diminish the value of a dental hygiene appointment when, in fact, these appointments mainly serve as an opportunity to prevent or treat disease and diagnose any potential oral problems.

2. In the 1980s, dental hygienists were included in a business model that assumed all team members on an “ideal” dental team contributed equally to practice productivity. As producers, hygienists were overlooked for almost 40 years as the concept of team and equality amongst all job positions was promoted. The reality is that dental hygienists are different from all other team members. As the second largest producers in a dental practice, dental hygienists play a major role in practice production, which is the key to long-term practice success and stability. While it’s beneficial and desirable for hygienists to think of themselves as team members, they must first focus on providing hygiene services only and prioritize their efforts on practice production-related treatment.

3. Hygienists see eight patients with one-hour appointments and all patients show up. This has been the traditional thought process surrounding dental hygiene and very little consideration has been given by most practices to making hygiene more productive. It is not that the practice leadership (typically the doctor) does not believe that hygienists cannot be more productive, it’s just not considered. However, you should consider this: even if there is only one hygienist in the practice, each hygienist can be at least 20% more productive without adding any time to the hygienists’ schedule, asking a hygienist to work faster, or suffer higher stress.

4. Hygienists often resist changes or additions in the hygiene appointment. This is natural in that they already feel that they barely have enough time to properly complete the hygiene visit and can be adversely affected by no-shows or doctors and/or patients running late and thereby delaying the hygienist for the next patient. These are practice management challenges that have solutions, and when those solutions are put in place, practice production will grow.

There are other reasons why dental hygiene has evolved the way it has in most practices. The primary challenge, simply summarized, is that businesses develop habits, and dental practices are no different. When was the last time your practice had a strategic session, staff meeting, discussion, or meeting with hygienists on how to increase hygiene productivity? The answer is probably never or minimally a long time ago. Given the impact dental hygiene can have on practice production, typically contributing about 25% of total production, it makes sense, as you complete this course, to identify those strategies that you can easily implement into the office to increase hygiene production. Some strategies can be implemented almost immediately, and others do require some coordination with the doctor and/or the administrative team.