Deciding to hire a dental associate can greatly impact your practice. As such, the decision demands a significant amount of consideration. While hiring a dental associate has several potential benefits such as lightening your patient load, growing your practice, or boosting your income, doing so is also a substantial investment of time and resources. Choosing to hire an associate before your practice is ready could result in financial strain. To determine hiring an associate is the best decision for your practice, here are some considerations before hiring a dental associate that all dentists should make.

What is your reason for wanting to hire a dental associate?

Before making the decision to hire a dental associate, it’s imperative to determine if your practice or situation would benefit from another dentist.

Viable reasons to consider hiring a dental associate include:

• If you aren’t physically able to keep up with you patient load.
• If you want to cut back your work hours.
• If you are ready to grow your practice.

If your reason for wanting to hire a dental associate isn’t on this list, then hiring an associate will probably not be beneficial for your practice or situation.

Do you have enough work to support an associate?

A common mistake that dentists make when hiring an associate is that they do so before their work load is large enough to fund the associate’s salary. If you plan on continuing to work full-time after hiring your associate, it’s important to make sure you have enough work to support them. If you choose to hire a dentist before your practice workload is large enough, you risk not having the funds to pay their salary and creating workloads that are too light for both the dentist and the dental associate. Such situations can cause a drop in the owner’s income and hurt your practice. It is imperative to determine if your workload can support a dental associate before taking one on.

Are you financially ready to hire a dental associate?

One of the most important considerations to make before hiring a dental associate is determining if you are financially ready to do so. Hiring a dental associate is a substantial financial investment. In addition to paying the new dental associate’s salary, you may need to hire other additional staff which will further increase your practice’s overhead costs. As such, hiring a dental assistant may result in a drop in profit for the first few months until your practice grows to provide a full workload for the associate. If such a drop would place significant financial strain on your practice, you may want to postpone hiring a dental associate until you are financially ready.

If you determine that hiring a dental associate is the right decision for your practice, Henry Schein Nationwide Dental Opportunities can help you find the perfect candidate. As a full-service associate dental recruitment agency, we are committed to simplifying the hiring process and filling open dental associate positions with exceptional dental professionals. For more information regarding our services, contact us today.