Dental Hygienists: Salaried or Paid on Commission?

Survey Says… Dentists Prefer Paying by the Hour

In our most recent survey, we asked dentists if they pay their hygienists an hourly wage, or if compensation is based on commission. Four out of five dentists report paying hygienists a base hourly wage. Dental Survey Only 19% say their hygienists are paid on commission. “Hygienists are a critical aspect of any practice,” wrote a prosthodontist. One dentist said of hygienists, “Most are overpaid,” while another commented: “Not a big profit center, but essential to the overall health of the practice.”

Read the complete dental hygienist survey results

About Julie Frey

Julie Frey is the Editor of TheWealthyDentist.com blog. She has dedicated her career to Internet marketing and communications, working side-by-side with dental marketing guru Jim Du Molin since 2006. She has a degree in Linguistics from Stanford University, has a passion for language and writing, and lives in San Francisco. Julie Frey+

  • gavin

    To those not paying an hourly wage, beware of labor laws. I used to pay a per diem rate until a hygienist took me to the labor board demanding $14,000 in unpaid overtime. Since then, we have a reverse engineered calculation of hourly wage plus ovetime which nets out to our agreed upon daily rate, all documented with signed time cards, of course.

  • Richard Greiner

    Hygienists are fabulous to the profession if you have good ones. It is difficult to find good ones, but when you do, and they understand and love dentistry, they can be a huge boon to your bottom line. Yes, they are expensive($46-50/hr here), but worth every penny when good. On the other hand, unhappy, poorly skilled hygienists can be a cancer to the practice. I like ones just out of school so they can be trained and not have ingrained bad habits.

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