Five Reasons to Update Your Oral Hygiene Efforts ASAP
The changing field of oral health will soon adversely affect you financially and healthwise.
First of all, the following is not about “poor little me.” It’s merely the dental situation as I see it now and for the next 5 years or longer.
This is important because in tight economic times, many more people avoid dental care than during good economic times. This means dentists who have already been financially struggling ever since COVID in 2019 will suffer even more loss as more people postpone dental treatment. The results will be:
- Much higher private dental fees across the board.
- More pressure to have extra treatment done as soon as possible — no more, “I want to think about it…”
- Insurance won’t cover as much as before because dentists will promote more services and products that are not covered by insurance.
- Dentists will start trying to get you to sign up with “Concierge” plans which are monthly subscriptions for “special treatment” such as teledentistry, post-operative phone calls, getting a discount for paying ahead of time for your dental care, and other things they should be doing anyway as part of regular marketing and customer service.
Now is the time to dramatically improve your preventive dental efforts because 80% of most common dental problems are EASY to avoid by just doing a few things right every day. That way, you’ll save on the upcoming potential financial hit of dental care.
1) Older dentists are selling out to the DSOs (Dental Service Organizations)
COVID has caused many older dentists who are near retirement to simply sell out to the DSOs by the hundreds. They either just retire early, or they often let the DSO manage payroll, hiring, firing, equipment, etc, and retire after a couple of years of boredom and DSO micromanagement. Maybe they can work the last few years without the usual business problems as a simple employee of a DSO and mentor a new dentist who’s struggling to start.
This way, the retiring dentists win by getting some sort of guaranteed, yet lower income while having something to do instead of just quitting. The DSOs win by getting new graduates for a steep discount, and experienced dentists for a moderate discount. The experienced dentists will freely train the new grads and then leave in a couple of years and the less experienced dentists will still be working for less while doing more because the older dentist has left the building. The DSOs win big time.
2) Younger dentists have too much debt
New dental graduates are often so in debt that they cannot even buy existing dental offices, let alone try to start a dental office from scratch — unless they are rich — and if they are rich, why bother with the hassle of running a dental practice? Why not just work for a DSO like a regular job and party on the weekends or weekdays or whatever, like ordinary workers do.
The new dentists will work for a lower income in return for insurance benefits, vacations, continuing education credits, and not need to worry about business, marketing, complaints, human resources, scheduling, cancellations, no-shows, etc.
Most new dental graduates will also be looking for additional income from side hustles, affiliate deals, product sales, anything to make up for the daily “grind” of the usual employee boss situation. The DSOs win again because they don’t need to increase the payroll. They can also give bonuses to dentists who sell the most non-covered services, optional services, products, potions, pills, etc. They’ll have inter-office contests to see which offices can outproduce each other. This is already happening!
3) Hygienists and assistants are leaving and/or demanding more $$ and fewer workdays
As the COVID crisis continues, many dental hygienists and dental assistants have either quit, been laid off, furloughed, or given reduced hours or days. The ones who have stayed have had to work harder for the same $$ because dentists have been complaining of reduced income. (But actually, when has a boss never complained about reduced income?)
As some dental business has been picking up, and will be picking up eventually, many dental offices are now understaffed. Any new employees are demanding higher wages. So the dentists are having to hire more expensive new employees without raising the rates of existing employees, which always backfires, and gets people angry and resentful. So dental payrolls will have to rise and these costs will be passed on to patients of course.
DSOs can handle this problem easier than private dentists can, because DSOs can offer all kinds of benefits that private dentists can’t, or never did, or don’t want to offer. The DSOs win again.
4) COVID has hit most dental offices hard
Many dental offices shut down for 4 months in 2019. Many only saw emergencies for 4 to 6 months. Most dental offices still have not reached prior levels of dental production even as of June 2022. There are still many patients afraid to come to the office or they only come for emergencies. Dentists have less and less money available for marketing, advertising, promotions, discounts, etc. They can’t compete with DSOs that have entire divisions solely for marketing to patients, recruiting young new staff for lower wages but better benefits, legal, HR, etc.
Many patients have postponed treatment because they are part of the Great Resignation or Great Reshuffle and they have lost their insurance benefits. Many people want to keep working from home and enter the Gig Workforce but can’t afford dental insurance, so dental care is bottom of the list.
DSOs can afford to offer custom in-house “insurance” for Gig workers and people who’ve lost their benefits. The DSOs win again
5) Dental operating expenses have skyrocketed
With COVID, dentists have had higher wages for newer employees, more expenses for increased sterilization and sanitation, fewer patients per hour, minimal to zero overlapping of patients, dramatically more personal protective equipment costs, more waste management costs, lab deliveries take extra time, supplies are on backorder, and much more. Everything has increased while inflation has also skyrocketed. Private dentists can’t compete against the large DSOs
With huge organizations come economies of scale. The large DSOs with over 600 to 1,600 offices can afford to negotiate supply prices. They can also scavenge underperforming offices and repurpose their equipment to other offices. They can combine patients from numerous offices into one location and eliminate waste. And when they do that, they can also buy more advanced new equipment that private dentists and new dentists can’t afford.
What this all means
Private dentistry is going by the wayside. Within 5 to 10 years, dentistry will be done in larger settings, groups, and more centralized locations. Your doctors will change with the wind as DSOs try to recruit doctors from each other and the best doctors will switch for the best financial reward to pay off their student loans.
Your dental fees won’t drop and your insurance won’t improve much. But with economies of scale, the DSOs can resist cost increases better than private dentists and at least not raise their fees as much and as often. But you’ll still pay more anyway because — well — the fees never go down.
BUT there’s one thing that will probably never happen — DENTAL PREVENTION. Because dental prevention cannot be easily taught, quantified, nor measured in dental offices, so it doesn’t make money. Dentistry is really just production and the only way to measure production is to track what is done — not what is prevented or not done. I suppose it could be possible to track prevention by estimating the number of problems that should have happened based on statistics and then rewarding doctors whose patients have had fewer problems — BUT — it might be possible that some doctors would just choose to do less work and make it seem like fewer problems occurred, and make more money by doing less. So you can see the problem with tracking and rewarding prevention — at least on the doctor’s side.
Therefore, you will always have to reward yourself by learning dental prevention on your own time, in your own space, at your own speed, and when you feel like it. That way you can save money that you might ordinarily spend, which is kind of like getting paid. I mean, you are already spending some money on oral hygiene products, so why not learn to use them more effectively so they actually work better.
And since 80% of most common dental problems are EASILY PREVENTABLE, it is absolutely in your best interest to learn the newest and best preventive dental concepts ASAP.
You can easily supercharge your preventive dental efforts at least 9X in 30 days and save a ton of money by avoiding most common dental problems. I can show you how.
Here’s a sample preventive dental course for you. It’s your adjunct to dental insurance and expensive dental treatment:
Wishing you well,
Steve Edwards, DDS
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