This month, dental professionals spoke with Becker’s about leadership, economic challenges, workforce shortages and more.
Here is what seven dental professionals told us in June:
The decisions dental leaders can’t afford to get wrong
Hamza Asumah, MD. Director, Operations of Juniper Services (Sparks, Nev.): The one decision dental leaders cannot afford to get wrong in the next year is whether to treat workforce development as an HR function or as a core operational strategy. We are in a structural staffing crisis — not a cycle. The ADA’s own data confirm that only 60% of dentists report adequate hygiene staffing, with 91% of those actively recruiting rating it as very or extremely challenging — and this has persisted unchanged for three years despite record enrollment in dental hygiene programs. That tells us the pipeline is not the answer. The answer is retention architecture: structured career ladders that give clinical and administrative team members a visible future inside your organization, not just a paycheck. I’ve seen firsthand that the practices with the lowest turnover are not always the ones paying the most — they’re the ones where people can see where they’re going. The leaders who build that infrastructure now will not only protect their margins; they’ll build something that becomes a genuine competitive moat as the talent market continues to tighten.
Why DSOs may be in for more economic trouble
Ian Mcnickle. Co-Founder and CEO of Icon Dental Partners (Camas, Wash.): A lot of groups are in trouble because they’re pretty over leveraged. It’s interesting when interest rates are low and debt’s cheap, and people are just buying practices right and left. That was what happened obviously pre-COVID, and even a little bit during the early stages of it. Those days are kind of — I don’t know if they’re gone, but they’re certainly on hold, and so it’s forced a healthy refocusing on balance sheets to get that debt under control to focus on organic growth and operations. I think the most effective dental leaders are going to have to get really good and dialed in at operating their practices as a business, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. We are all about clinical autonomy. Our doctors have full control over their clinical decisions and labs and supplies and whatnot, but you can have your cake and eat it too. You can run a very effective and efficient practice while delivering great healthcare to your patients and having a good culture for your team. They’re not mutually exclusive. So, to me, that’s where you’re going to have to be really dialed in — running efficiently, don’t have a ton of debt and figure out how to grow organically. I think if you can do that, you’ll be in pretty good shape.
Source: ‘We are in a structural staffing crisis’: What dental leaders told us in June / Becker’s Dental