Fighting an Uphill Battle

Unfortunately, in recent years, statistics reveal that inflation and increases in overhead and other expenses have significantly outpaced increases in dental insurance reimbursement rates, stymieing practices' profits and making many dentists question their degree of participation. This month, Inside Dentistry's cover story examines how dentists are combatting the challenges of dental insurance and presents strategies to improve profitability, including increasing production, raising fees, ensuring proper coding, and negotiating with providers for rate increases.

The stagnation of reimbursement rates is having a profound effect on my hygiene program, and this is being amplified by another problem that has arisen since the COVID-19 pandemic-staffing shortages. It has become very difficult to find hygienists, and those still in practice are commanding significantly higher wages. However, in the past 2 to 3 years, the insurance programs that I participate in haven't raised my hygiene-related rates by more than 1% to 2%, which doesn't make up the difference. Although I've written and lectured extensively about how dentists can make hygiene a profit center instead of a loss leader, for the first time in my 38 years in practice, I'm questioning the viability of my formula for success. If, like associates, you're looking to pay your hygienists approximately 33% of what they produce, with today's insurance reimbursement rates, offering them competitive salaries requires an unrealistic increase in hygiene production.