Staffing shortages, recruitment, and retention lead dentists' concerns for 2024
Staffing shortages, recruitment, and retention were among the dental profession’s top challenges in 2023, and a majority of dental practices expect them to remain so in the new year.
The December 2023 Economic Outlook and Emerging Issues in Dentistry, a tracking poll that the ADA Health Policy Institute (HPI) started in January 2022, questioned dentists on issues ranging from confidence in their practice and the overall US economy as well as continued its evaluation of such core measures as economic outlook, schedule busyness, issues with scheduling, and more.
But staffing and recruitment remain dominant concerns, with more than 60% of dentists polled indicating that staffing recruitment remains their top challenge for the new year—and little change in their perceived difficulty in recruiting dental hygienists and assistants from what it was a year ago.
Highlights of recruitment challenges
- Nearly all the dentists recruiting for a dental hygienist—almost 95%—indicated that filling that role is “extremely challenging” or “very challenging”—in both December 2022 and December 2023. Those percentages for dental assistants remained steady from December 2022 to 2023, at 87% and 82.7% respectively.
- Last year, almost half of dentists indicated hiring dental assistants; a third said they hired dental hygienists or administrative staff.
- Online recruitment websites, word of mouth, and social media were the top three methods cited for recruiting and hiring dental hygienists and assistants.
Other December 2023 poll results
Average patient wait times: Appointment wait times for patients of record hit a high for 2023 in December, with patients waiting an average of 12.3 business days for an appointment. The low for the year was January, during which patients waited an average of 10.3 days to be seen.
Practice and economic confidence: When asked about their confidence in their practice, the dental care sector, and overall economic confidence, dentists polled indicated a slight increase over the previous month.
Applicant benefits: Compared with the previous year, in 2023 more dentists adjusted hours to meet job applicants’ requests. In all benefit categories surveyed, including paid time off (PTO), starting pay rate, health insurance, and more, dentists indicated offering more than they had in 2022.
Access the full Economic Outlook and Emerging Issues in Dentistry report for December 2023
