We have talked in past articles about how much the dentist produces per hour and how much the hygienist produces per hour. But what about the person in every practice who makes everything run more smoothly … the dental assistant?
What exactly does the dental assistant produce for the practice per hour? It’s a statistic that is often overlooked or forgotten as the assistant is rarely thought of an income producer in many practices. Yet, think about the things that your assistant can legally do in your state like nightguards, pedo prophies, biteguards, and/or whitening. There are many opportunities for the assistant to impact the bottom line of the practice.
However, before we go further into the article, it is important to understand that dental assistants must adhere to the individual laws of each state and not do anything illegal. That is something assistants must know, as well as a fact that every dentist in every state must know as well.
If you don’t know what dental assistants can legally do or not do in each state, there is a simple way to find out. Go to www.danb.org and click on the “Meet State Requirements” at the top of the page. From there, you can click on individual states to see the breadth of duties dental assistants can perform in each state. It’s easy to do and so important for so many reasons.
So what is the gross production per assistant per hour? To find this out, we took data from Sikka Software over the last seven years. The data we are using for this comparison has been collected by Sikka Software from more than 12,500 dental practices from around the United States.
Here are the numbers…
Gross production per assistant per hour:
2010 – $174.58
2011 – $139.78
2012 – $106.23
2013 – $113.57
2014 – $117.63
2015 – $119.34
2016 – $133.86
Again, this is per assistant per hour per practice. Think about all of those numbers together and you’ll see the true power of the assistant in your practice.
So what can you do to ensure your dental assistant is producing as much as possible for the practice? We talked to Kevin Henry, a speaker to dental assistants across the country and co-founder of IgniteDA.net, about that.
“The most important thing any practice can do is know the laws of its respective state and then figure out how the assistant can do everything he or she is legally allowed to do in that state,” Henry said. “The dental assistant can be a bigger boost to the bottom of the line of the business when the correct information is known.”
What is your dental practice doing today to maximize your dental assistant’s value to the business? Start by educating yourself and your team on your state’s laws, make sure your dental assistant is empowered and educated, put an action plan in place and watch your business grow.
Note: Want to learn more about what Sikka Software can do for your practice? Practice Mobilizer is the free app that lets you send HIPAA-compliant video messages, track patient arrival times, provides zip code specific fee data and more. Click here to learn more.
This article was originally published June 16, 2017 on DentistryIQ. You can view the original article here: http://bit.ly/2sKSJuP
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