Many dental practices are continuously recruiting hygienists, dental assistants, or support staff. At a given point, several practices are always short-staffed across multiple positions in the practice.
Rising employee turnover, including in a dental practice, can be unfavourable to any organization. It is important not to make staff feel like any other cog in the wheel. This leads to a lowering of self-confidence and a culture that hampers productivity.
Dental healthcare is a growing industry. Patients today are making informed choices to manage their overall health, and this includes any dental requirements. A patient also expects quality treatment and will consider switching to another practice for their benefit.
Dental staffing solutions are vital for a practice. It must address staffing issues with care and tact. It needs trained and competent professionals who boost the reputation of the practice and lead to satisfied patients. Some challenges and issues exist or arise, and they need to be managed accordingly. Some challenges in hiring and retention of staff and teams are as below:
Practices are hiring fewer employees to cover all essential billing and insurance activities, which could lead to burnout or demotivation. In addition to billing, the team can be handed additional responsibilities, which could also hamper productivity.
Based on current trends, clinical salaries are on the higher side, and they also have access to educational and training options. As a result, fewer professionals garner the expertise required to become an expert in dental billing. When a practice is understaffed, this issue gets magnified as the existing professional does not have time to train recruits appropriately.
Attracting talent is not an easy task. The demand for higher wages is pervasive as staff are also looking at countering household expenses and rising inflation. The practice also needs to have an adequate stock of supplies and pay for any required services to keep the practice running. This also prevents the practice from offering highly competitive salaries to the dental team.
Staff will always have expectations for a raise in wages. The practice also needs to keep operational and overhead costs from ballooning. This can be a pervasive and complex problem that needs to be carefully managed.
Some steps to successfully manage hiring strategies are as below.
The dental practice can leverage automation for activities and processes that require a lot of time or a lot of training. The purpose is to drive efficiency, as automation or software packages can cover some of these tasks that consume a lot of time and effort.
For a regular practice, automation can be introduced in revenue cycle management, credentialing, marketing, administrative, and other mundane tasks.
Billing tools can lighten administrative burdens, and this helps to reduce patient billing costs. Savings can be diverted to hiring an additional resource where needed.
The practice can consider outsourcing to improve quality and reduce cost. It can hire the services of outsourced professionals to manage non-clinical tasks. It can use the services of experts in areas such as billing, collections, and insurance verification.
This ensures that these processes and activities are managed efficiently and with fewer financial resources. It also offers additional time for the dental team to focus on key issues.
The practice can also consider using temporary staffing services, whereby resources such as hygienists can hire staff to fill possible vacancies at a time when demand is high.
The practice can rely on a specialized dental recruitment agency to address a staffing problem, especially if it is persistent. These agencies specialize in filling positions for qualified dental personnel, front office staff, hygienists, and other resources needed for running operations smoothly. The practice can get positions filled swiftly and can bargain hard for competitive service fees.
If a dental practice does not use external hiring resources, then the practice needs to broaden the hiring channels and sources to cast a wider net that could attract talent to the practice.
Social media is also a very practical choice for a practice to attract potential staff to the practice. An advantage of this method is that social media permits greater transparency on both sides of the hiring process.
The practice can consider cross-training the dental team by offering opportunities for them to study and perform supplementary roles. This can help the practice to adapt to any staffing shortage and tide it over the crisis effectively.
When efficiently done, a dental assistant can be trained to undertake administrative tasks or even more complex processes if possible. This can help to maximize team capability and efficiency.
The practice can be affiliated with a few dental educational programs. By helping these programs handle the gap between the program deliverables and the workforce demands, the practice can be viewed by potential prospects as a possible source for employment.
This collaboration also adds a thought leadership perspective to the practice. Such a collaboration can also give the practice an edge when hiring from such programs. Such an approach also offers prospects a glimpse into the processes and workflows that happen within a private practice. The practice can fill positions and offer fulfilling professional experiences to prospects. One must note that such an approach is also time-intensive before it can offer any dividends.
While attracting new talent to the practice to address hiring issues, the practice also needs to maintain effective means to retain the current team. Creating a professional culture of learning, growth, and camaraderie can help draw talent from outside as and when needed. The practice can tap into opportunities for the existing team to increase their knowledge and skills. Partnering with Capline Dental Services can also offer innovative solutions like automation and strategic use of social media to handle staffing challenges more effectively.
