Becker's Dental + DSO Review

17 BECKER'S DENTAL + DSO REVIEW // VOL. 2022 NO. 2 17 SPEAKER SPOTLIGHT What caused 'a perfect storm' for dental hygienists and what can be done to solve it: Dr. William Simon By Ariana Portalatin A sense of unappreciation, COVID-19 and a lack of training programs are all contributing factors to the ongo- ing shortage of dental hygienists in the in- dustry, according to William Simon, DMD. Dr. Simon is the owner of City Smiles and Sonrisa Urbana, both in Chicago. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees for the Illinois State Dental Society. He spoke with Becker's about the workforce shortages, potential solutions and when the industry could see improvements. Question: What can you say about the current dental hygienist work- force shortage? Dr. William Simon: A lot of things play into it and I would say at this point, it re- ally is a perfect storm for the dental hy- giene profession, as far as dentists' abil- ity to attract hygienists to their practices. I'm a dentist who has a lot of apprecia- tion for my team. I think that you might find that dentistry historically has not al- ways positioned themselves that way. It took a long time for dental practices to get to a point where the team was rec- ognized to be an integral part of the pro- vision of the care. There are a number of hygienists out there that in some ways don't feel as if they are looked at by the practice owners as a contributor to the level that they might like to be looked at. In some cases, dental hygienists feel they are just a machine that's pumping out dental hygiene. There are still offices out there where the dentists are not uti- lizing dental hygienists, or perhaps they don't truly employ them to the extent that they could, in other words, expand- ing their functions and allowing them to give input into the way that the care is provided. And I think that would go a long way also toward making a dental hygiene career more attractive. In my practice, we lean on our hygiene team very heavily for much more than simply to provide the actual clinical care physically. It goes well beyond. When COVID-19 hit, many hygienists actual- ly were furloughed at that point. And it sent a couple messages. One message maybe was, "We're not going to pay you through this pandemic. We're just going to furlough you. You're not that critical to our operations." So I think that might have opened up some eyes. And I would also say that perhaps some of the late career hygienists may have just said, "That's it, I'm done. I've had enough. I only had a few years left in my career and to come back in the midst of all of this with all the PPE and the potential risk, it's just not worth it to me anymore." Another thing that is important to look at is that a lot of dental hygienists his- torically are women. Many women have spouses who are often the primary wage earner in the relationship and as a result, they're the ones providing healthcare in- surance. So it's a lot easier potentially for somebody to leave a job when they don't have to worry whether or not they're go- ing to be losing health benefits. I think another thing that came out of this was that some of the hygienists maybe were stuck in a situation they really didn't have that much excitement about. May- be they felt they were in some kind of a rut, and then all of a sudden they're fur- loughed for three months, four months or whatever it might have been. They got a chance to see life without their profession and to see, "Hey, maybe I re- ally don't want to necessarily go back to that." If there were people on the edge of feeling good about their job, that gave them an opportunity to see things from outside looking in, instead of inside looking out, and gave them an opportu- nity to make decisions to change. I don't think that we're seeing enough graduates in dental hygiene programs. I'm not that deeply familiar with all of the ways that hygiene programs are being offered throughout our country. I know what's happening here in Illinois, and what we're seeing is that we're not graduating enough minority hygienists who would go and serve in minority ar- eas. One of the areas where dental hy- giene staffing struggles exist are in ar- eas where there's not a good mix of the minority groups that are coming out of the schools. Generally speaking, just like any dentist coming out of dental school, the preference is to typically go into an urban area or a suburban area, and not many dentists coming out of dental school want to go into rural practices. I think that also potentially holds true for dental hygiene. Q: Do you think the increasing pres- ence of larger group practices is mak- ing it harder for smaller practices to attract talent? WS: Yes, potentially. There's always this push-pull between independent prac- tice and corporate entities, where the corporate entities may be in a position to offer higher wages. They may be in a position to offer even a signing bonus. I know they offer signing bonuses for den- tists and they also may be in a position to offer more benefits than an indepen- dent dental practice would, especially a single-doctor practice or a single-lo- cation practice. So there's always going to be this push-pull for a dental hygien- ist or even a new doctor to say, "Well, where do I want to go? Do I want to go into a DSO-type organization where I can get myself a decent wage, solid employment, maybe a signing bonus, good benefits, et cetera?" Probably the Dr. William Simon, DMD. Image Credit: Callie Lipkin

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