Dear Sally,
I was recently give your name from Dr. H. I am a registered dental hygienist in California and my dentist/boss wants to implement acceleraged hygiene into our practice and has asked me to help get it started. I am very excited to take on this callenge, however, he recently told me that a hygienist should only be making a fourth of her production. I found this hard to understand because i have only seen on average about a third. Dr. H wte an article that said a Hygienist’s salary should be 30-35% of production. I wrote to him to find out where he found these numbers. He responded that I should contact you. Now I know you are very busy but I would really like to know if this percentage is correct and do you see with many of the dental offices you work with?

I have no problem working harder or smarter but I want to be paid fairly.
Thank you for your time.
Teresa B., RDH

Hi Teresa,
The industry standard for hygienists and associate dentists is 1/3 of production to salary, 1/3 to overhead of the department and 1/3 profit to the practice. Hygienists should not be paid anymore than 33%. HOWEVER, when you are talking about accelerated hygiene, that has to utilize an assistant, the salary of the assistant + the salary of the hygienist cannot be anymore than 33% of the net production.

In other words, for example, the hygienist is paid $40/hour and the assistant is paid $15/hour = $55/hour so the production of two employees must = $165/hour x 8 hour work day or $1,320/day in production and salary costs are $55 x 8 hours = $440 is 33% of that production. Now, let’s look at your $0/hour x 8 hours – $320/day divided by $120 in production = 24.2%. So, that is probably where your doctor is coming up with 25% of the accelerated production. Without the assistant, your production would less and in line with the 33%.

Let me know if you have any other questions.
Sally