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. 
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
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 22nd, 2007 at 12:35 pm
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.
February 15th, 2008 at 8:42 am
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.