Has dental productivity been hiding the decline in real demand?
Yes, and that crutch is running out. Look at how practices stayed profitable through the early 2000s even as real income and the insurance pool shrank. The counterweight was raw productivity. If you have practiced since 1980 you have lived it. Dentists went from two-handed dentistry to four-handed, then six and even eight, with assistants stacked in a super operatory and high-speed protocols moving cases through fast. A modest operator gained maybe twenty percent. The gunners at the top doubled their output. That speed quietly offset every downward trend for a couple of decades. The problem is you can only squeeze so much. Without the next big technology breakthrough in speed, that lever is largely spent. So you cannot out-produce these trends forever. The next gain has to come from acceptance and demand, not from going faster in the chair.
If the answers you are finding here resonate with you, my team and I work with a small group of clients each year. The next step is a complimentary Discovery Consultation and Practice Review with Dr. McAnally.