The Role of the Dental Hygienist

As mentioned above, the role of the dental hygienist was typically seen as treating up to eight patients per day on average in one-hour appointments. No-shows, which have a negative effect on practice production and productivity, are highest with dental hygiene patients. Patients frequently view dental hygiene appointments as “less important”, to be skipped when necessary and simply rescheduled. All too often, practices make it easy for patients to just reschedule, which merely serves to reinforce their belief that skipping a dental hygiene appointment is acceptable and without negative consequences for both the patient and the practice.

One approach to increasing dental hygiene production and productivity is to re-examine the role of the dental hygienist. Dental hygienists have many other areas where they can contribute to improving patient clinical care and optimizing practice production and productivity. The following suggestions can be incorporated into any dental hygiene program and in any dental practice to create a win-win situation for patients and the practice.

1. Address overdue services, such as x-rays and fluoride. Overdue x-rays and fluoride can cost practices tens of thousands of dollars per year in lost production. Encourage hygienists to check each patient’s file to see who is due or overdue for x-rays and fluoride and then focus on ensuring that those patients are caught up.

2. Dental sealants are an excellent way to help prevent decay in both children and seniors. Pediatric dental practices tend to place many more sealants than general practices, most likely due to a matter of loss of focus. Each child should be evaluated for sealants and practices should be comfortable making these recommendations to parents. In most cases, parents are very positive about preventive dentistry. In certain circumstances, sealants for the elderly are also appropriate and can contribute to prevention and increase practice production.

3. Follow up on incomplete or unaccepted treatment. The dental hygienist should review every patient’s record for incomplete or unaccepted treatment. Once this is identified, hygienists should use basic scripting to remind patients that they have not completed treatment or acted on the recommended treatment plan, and this should be done at every visit. Hygienists will be amazed to find patients who will then decide to act on recommended treatment that they previously had either postponed or ignored for six months, two years, five years, or even more. The reasons are multifold that patients do not follow through with treatment; however, if the hygienist does not discuss this with the patients, then it is most likely to be forgotten, and treatment will never be provided.

4. Recommend elective services. The dental hygienist typically has an hour with a patient where the dentist typically spends approximately five minutes. When the dental hygienist uses part of the chair time to educate patients about elective services, such as cosmetics or implant dentistry, they can create awareness and motivation for patients to investigate further treatment. This can add 5 –10% to annual practice production.

5. Identify potential treatment. In this case, we are not referring to elective treatment. We are referencing treatment that needs to be performed to maintain optimal oral health. Failing restorations, crown margins that are now more open, and newly observed decay are all examples of opportunities for the hygienist to point out to patients that there is a need for dentistry, referring these findings to the doctor so that the doctor can confirm this during the doctor hygiene examination.