Free tool
Is hygiene actually making money?
A full hygiene schedule and a profitable one are not the same thing. Credit hygiene only with what hygiene produces, and the number left over is the one you can actually manage.
What hygiene keeps, hour by hour
Starts with example numbers · nothing is sent anywhereTotal hygiene production for a typical month: cleanings, perio and everything else the hygienists produce. Not exam or doctor production.
What you actually collect against what hygiene produces.
As a share of wage, to load the true hourly cost.
As a share of hygiene production.
Share of hygiene patients who leave with their next visit already on the schedule.
Used only to estimate visits per month, for the reappointment figure below.
healthy 90–100% · the site's own benchmark for a healthy hygiene department
The number that matters
Hygiene clears $69 an hour after wage, benefits and supplies. Closing the gap to 90% reappointment would put roughly $3,072 more on the schedule every month.
Doctor exam time and exam production are left out on purpose. This model credits hygiene only with what hygiene itself produces. The reappointment figure is illustrative: it assumes each newly reappointed patient returns for a visit worth the average production per visit, not a guarantee.
How to read it
Busy is not the same as profitable.
You can look at a wall-to-wall hygiene schedule and still lose money on it, because a full schedule can be full of the wrong appointments. Recall visits with an exam and x-rays, and SRP appointments, almost always carry their weight. The routine prophy-only visits with no x-rays and no doctor’s exam are usually the hour-long slots quietly dragging the whole department down.
This tool deliberately leaves the doctor’s exam and its production out of the math. Hygiene is credited only with hygiene’s own production, minus the loaded cost of the hygienist’s time and the supplies it takes to run the chair. That is the number that tells you whether the department stands on its own, not whether it looks fine once the doctor’s exam production is folded in.
The reappointment line at the bottom is the lever worth pulling first. Getting more patients to leave with their next cleaning already on the books costs nothing extra in staff or supplies. It just fills hours that were going to happen anyway with visits instead of gaps.
Questions
Before you act on it.
Why doesn't this count the doctor's exam or the exam production?
Because a hygiene department that looks profitable only after the doctor's exam is added in isn't actually profitable. It's subsidized. Crediting hygiene only with hygiene's own production is the only way to see the number that's actually yours to manage.
My schedule is full. Why is the margin still thin?
A full schedule can be full of the wrong appointments. Routine prophy and perio maintenance visits with no x-rays and no doctor's exam are usually the low-production slots dragging the average down, even while recall visits with exam and x-rays and SRP appointments carry their weight fine.
What should hygiene be producing per hour?
A common rule of thumb is at least three times the hygienist's loaded hourly cost, including benefits and payroll taxes. A hygienist with a true cost of $72 an hour should be aiming for something in the neighborhood of $216 an hour in production: well above simple break-even.
Is the reappointment number a guarantee?
No. It's explicitly illustrative. It assumes every additional patient who leaves with a booked next visit actually shows up and produces the average amount per visit. Real results depend on your recall system and your team following up on the appointments that get made.
Hygiene profitability is one module of six in the course.
Related reading
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- The Research Says: Do Patients Really Need a 6-Month Recall? (The Case for 12)10 min
- The “Busy-But-Broke” Hygiene Department: A Dentist’s Guide to Profitability3 min