Is your practice struggling to find skilled staff? Here's how to overcome the dental staffing crisis.

Dental staffing shortages have become a pressing concern, particularly in roles critical to operations like billing and administration. Practices consistently report that “good help is hard to find,” a sentiment echoed in the 2024 salary survey from dentalpost.net. This survey highlights key insights about rising turnover rates, challenges in securing qualified candidates, and the increasing pressure to balance competitive salary demands with rising operational costs. Drawing on these findings and our direct observations in the dental industry, this blog explores why staffing shortages persist and, more importantly, actionable solutions to help your practice navigate and overcome these challenges.

Table of contents

1. Challenges in hiring and retention
2. Key trends in dental billing specialist staffing
3. 3 Effective solutions for dental billing staffing shortages

Challenges in hiring and retention

The survey data shows that practice owners consistently face challenges with unfilled roles, rising salary expectations, and a persistent need to retain skilled team members, but what’s causing the challenges? Some of the primary factors are: 

• Increased workload and burnout: With fewer employees covering essential billing tasks, burnout levels have increased. Billing staff are often tasked with handling multiple responsibilities, resulting in lower job satisfaction and compounding the turnover issue. Read our blog about burnout in dentistry for a deeper dive into contributing factors and solutions. 
• Fewer dental billing professionals entering the workforce: Clinical salaries tend to be higher, and have far more educational and training options causing fewer professionals to achieve the expertise needed in dental billing. Understaffing magnifies this issue further, as trained staff do not have time to train new team members appropriately. 
• Experienced workforce nearing retirement: The retirement outlook for the dental billing workforce underscores the urgency for practices to plan for staff succession and explore alternative staffing solutions, such as outsourcing or cross-training, to mitigate the impact of upcoming retirements.

Key trends in dental billing specialist staffing

To condense and unpack the data in the survey a bit more, here are some highlights from the salary survey that illustrate why staffing remains a top concern for dental practices backed by data, *Data Source: 2024 Dental salary survey, dentalpost.net 

• Minimal salary growth amid rising costs: For dental billing specialists, the average annual income in 2023 saw only a minor increase to $47,683, with an average hourly rate around $25. Although salaries have technically risen, the survey suggests many billing specialists are not experiencing a true boost in earnings, often working fewer hours than in previous years.
• High turnover and job dissatisfaction: Of the billing specialists surveyed, 46% were applying to new jobs at the time of the survey or planning to apply for new jobs by the end of 2024. An additional 19% reported they might apply for new jobs before 2025, driven by dissatisfaction with current compensation and a desire for a better work environment.This high level of turnover not only strains existing staff but also disrupts continuity in billing processes, impacting revenue flow and overall productivity.
• The looming retirement wave: 32% of billing specialists plan to retire within the next six years, with fewer trained professionals entering the field.​This significant percentage highlights a further impending challenge for practices as they prepare for more vacancies in billing roles.

3 Solutions for dental billing staffing shortages

Given the depth of these challenges, the following solutions provide practices with strategic options to stabilize and enhance their billing processes in any scenario.

1. Outsource your dental billing: 

Wisdom offers a specialized team of billing professionals who bring expertise and industry-specific knowledge to help practices navigate billing complexities. By partnering with a dental billing company such as Wisdom, dental practices can offload dental billing burdens and rely on a vetted team that ensures accuracy and compliance pertaining to insurance verification and billing, and patient billing. This solution mitigates all of the challenges mentioned in this article, and eliminates dental billing specialist turnover entirely, saving you time, money, and stress, all while increasing your revenue.  Read more about about when, and how to choose a dental billing company.

2. Hire business assistants without dental experience: 

For non-specialized tasks, hiring business assistants with strong customer service skills, even without dental experience, is a practical solution. These assistants can handle general office duties and patient interactions, freeing billing specialists to focus on revenue-generating tasks without distraction. This approach offers flexibility and supports front-office efficiency.

3. Cross train current staff, and provide continuing education:

Investing in continuing education and cross-training within the team can improve job satisfaction and retention. Practices can reduce gaps in staffing by developing a more adaptable workforce. However, these approaches present their own challenges; while cross-training enables flexibility, it can also mean that clinical staff members are pulled away from their primary responsibilities. Multitasking and balancing different roles can lead to revenue-impacting mistakes in billing, making this a temporary fix rather than a long-term solution.

Offices who do utilize a well compensated, dental billing centric team in-office should ensure the expertise of those assigned dental billing duties. Team members assigned dental billing duties should not be placed in multi-tasking, patient facing situations while performing those duties as the distractions can lead to revenue costing mistakes such as incorrect adjustments, incorrect insurance breakdowns, denied claims, and much more. If you’re in need of a quick, go-to reference for dental billing basics to help support your practice, download our eBook Exclusive Guide to Dental Billing Secrets and Dental Billing Cheat Sheets.‍

You may be wondering, with the industry-wide shortage of skilled billers, how Wisdom avoids the staffing challenges and obstacles mentioned in this blog. Here’s how:

Wisdom stands out by retaining a team of highly trained billing experts through a stringent vetting process, ensuring each team member brings a high level of expertise and commitment. Our dental billers benefit from ongoing internal education and have collaborative opportunities that foster continuous learning and knowledge-sharing, keeping them well-prepared to handle complex billing requirements while minimizing turnover and burnout. With custom-built technology and tools designed to streamline the billing process, we support efficient collections and reduce administrative burdens on practices. By partnering with Wisdom, dental practices gain the stability of a carefully vetted, experienced billing team equipped with innovative resources, ensuring accuracy, consistency, and reliable support. This dedicated approach enables your in-office team to focus fully on patient care, knowing their billing is in expert hands.