schools serving the entire southeastern quarter of the state. As our personal practices continue to grow, meeting the demand for patient care in our surrounding communities is our passion. Southeast Georgia is one of the fastestgrowing corridors in the state due to the port expansions between Savannah and Brunswick. And the patients of Southeast Georgia are more educated, more interested, and more invested than ever before in preventive dentistry. At first, our solution to the RDH shortage was to look inward. We devoured dental-specific workforce data. We renovated and created beautiful offices. We hired and trained hygiene assistants. We cultivated a positive and rewarding work culture and dug into our profitability to offer some of the highest pay for RDHs in the region. We found creative ways to offer top benefit packages, performance pay, and sign-on bonuses. We recruited outside the state and even moved team members to our area. And yet even after internal scrutiny, the declining hygienist workforce is concerning. Over half of the national RDH workforce who left the profession after the pandemic never returned, and over 30% of the current RDHs plan on retiring within the next five years. Many practices across the state don’t have openings for new patient cleanings for weeks, even months. Our state has 23 counties with zero registered dental hygienists, 70% of which are in South Georgia. We have nearly 40 counties in the state with 5 or fewer registered dental hygienists. That’s nearly 40% of our counties with zero to five hygienists in the 12th fastest-growing state in the union. And for a myriad of reasons, our state’s hygiene schools do not currently have the ability to increase their output of new hygienists. Hygiene was already trending downward as a career-long before the pandemic. Both the Dykema DSO Industry Group and the Dentist Entrepreneur Organization recently held their national conferences where the hygienist shortage was the top concern of attendees. Touching on the question at the business panel CE class at the recent GDA Expo in Jekyll, dentists felt this was a hot-button topic as well. Dentists contracted with insurance are challenged to break even on cleanings, with rising RDH compensation alongside the soaring cost of supplies. I would argue that the hygiene shortage is the biggest problem facing dentistry in the state of Georgia - especially in rural and underserved areas. Medicaid providers will struggle to staff hygienists, deeply undercutting the ability to take care of our state’s most vulnerable population- children. In fact, several such offices in our region have closed or may soon close altogether. But while dental practice owners will find themselves losing -in some way, shape, or form- the biggest loser is the patient. Preventive dentistry is healthcare that actually WORKS. Dentists are the final frontier in preventive care with two annual checkups, and as the entryway to two of the major systems of the human body, the mouth is the best snapshot of our overall health, allowing dentists to literally save lives. Losing the ability to provide enough preventive care due to a lack of hygienists will be a huge loss for the patients of Georgia. After digesting the data, I believe that we need to look at legislative action, alerting our elected officials to the effect the hygienist shortage will have on the children, adults, and special needs patients of our state. But more specifically I want to know…What is our plan? How can I help? And who will join me? Because it will only be together, as a profession, that we can ensure how to take care of the patients of the great state of Georgia. Deeply concerned in South Georgia, Elizabeth Powell Thank you for taking the time to read this and for being a member of the GDA. I invited Elizabeth to write this letter after our conversation as it became clear that I had not understood the full gravity of the situation. It will certainly be a challenge to make meaningful changes in our ability to produce sufficient auxiliaries, specifically hygienists, in the near future. I hope some of you who read this are inspired to get involved wherever you can. While we may not always agree, and it may not be possible to publish all submissions, I invite you to share your voice on an industry topic that is important to you. Please submit your own Letter to the Editor by emailing communications@gadental.org Thank you very much. | 7 Sept 2024
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