What Managers Need to Know About Dental Assistant Turnover
Dental assistants are an integral part of every dental practice, and all managers know that when a dental assistant is out for the day—or worse, leaves the practice—it creates many challenges.
If a dental assistant is out for one day, the practice might reschedule a few patients or have other team members pick up the tasks. That can work for the short term, but it becomes a bigger issue when a position is open for weeks or months.
Not only could patient volumes and profitability suffer, but the whole team is at risk for burnout.
But turnover is preventable!
New research on the financial impact of dental assistants from the Dental Assisting National Board (DANB) and the DALE Foundation shows how your practice could be impacted by open dental assistant roles and how you can use pay increases as a retention strategy to help your practice save—and earn—more money in the long run.
Here are five things you need to know.
1. Dental Assistants Make a Meaningful Impact on Dental Practice Productivity
Dental assistants bring tangible, financial value to dental practices and clinics, and 94% of respondents state that dental assistants help improve patient retention.
“Dental assistants enable doctors to focus entirely on the patients,” said an office manager in South Dakota. “Having a dental assistant in the room not only makes the patient more comfortable but allows the dentist to be more efficient.”
2. Dental Assistant Turnover Impacts the Practice for Months
The average dental practice hires 3 dental assistants every 2 years, either to fill a vacant role or to grow the team.
The time to recruit and train dental assistants is significant. According to the research, dental practices spend approximately 5 months hiring and training a new dental assistant.
Office managers and practice administrators are typically responsible for hiring a new dental assistant, representing significant time spent on staffing issues that could otherwise be spent on tasks that could directly impact the practice’s revenues.
“We have hired several assistants that had no prior experience and it takes so long to train them that it’s almost not worth hiring anyone without experience,” noted an office manager in Washington.
Some practices have gotten creative to minimize vacancies.
One practice administrator in Georgia explained, “We hire to have an extra assistant at all times to cover absences and at-will termination. The market is very tight in our area and we would be waiting weeks to hire when needed.”
3. There Are Significant Costs Related to Dental Assistant Turnover
When the dental assistant is out of the office, almost one in four dental practices decrease or reschedule patient visits, resulting in a 6% decrease in daily average revenue. For public clinics, the impact is more significant, with almost half decreasing or rescheduling patient visits.
The research revealed that each open dental assistant position costs the practice more than $10,000, or 25% of the dental assistant’s annual pay. The at-risk revenue from reduced patient volumes comes to more than $21,000, or 1.2% of the practice’s annual revenue.
If the dental practice had an open dental assistant position for a full year, it could potentially lose out on nearly $110,000 in revenue and incur $30,000 to almost $60,000 in additional labor costs due to other team members taking on additional tasks.
Practices with higher assistant-to-dentist ratios realize greater productivity and other benefits.
“Having two assistants for the solo doctor has been amazing,” said an office manager in Pennsylvania. “We used to have it as a one-to-one relationship, but having one-to two, while it costs a bit more, has added to production, made the doctors life so much easier and made workflow better.”
4. Increasing Dental Assistant Pay Will Reap Financial Returns
Salary is a top job factor for dental assistants, and dental assistants with higher wages also report higher job satisfaction. Additionally, insufficient pay is the top reason for dental assistants’ dissatisfaction at work and the number one reason assistants leave the profession.
“Benefits and bonuses are extremely important for dental assistant retention,” noted an office manager in New Jersey. “Our practice has had a lot of dental assistants over the years and a key factor was that they wanted ideally $25+ an hour, as well as sick days, PTO, and some sort of bonus.”
By increasing wages, dental practices can:
- Mitigate dental assistant turnover
- Reduce associated hiring and training costs
- Maintain productivity levels
- Preserve at-risk revenue
Increasing dental assistant pay by 15% can increase retention while offsetting the costs of turnover—ultimately resulting in increased productivity for the practice and higher revenues.
5. Resources Are Available to Office Managers
DANB and the DALE Foundation have created a toolkit for dental leaders to help them fully understand the financial picture of the impact of dental assistants on their practice.
Visit the resources page to explore the retention calculator and other tools to help your practice evaluate your practice’s financial data. Go to www.danb.org/financial-impact.
About Our Sponsor
Hanna Aronovich is the Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer of the Dental Assisting National Board (DANB) and the DALE Foundation.
