By: Dr. Elizabeth Eggert
You may have already felt the effects of the current national dental hygienist shortage—whether it’s longer wait times for your recare and cleaning visit or the appearance of unfamiliar faces in your appointment chair. This shortage isn’t limited to scattered anecdotes—it’s backed by stark data. As of early 2025, there are approximately 7,085 dental professional shortage areas across the U.S., where access to dental care—including hygiene services—is severely limited.
Meanwhile, the ADA reports that one in three dentists are actively struggling to recruit hygienists or assistants. That shortage is contributing to an estimated 11 percent reduction in dental practice capacity nationally, and roughly 40 percent of dental practices are struggling to fill vacant hygienist positions.
In Minnesota, the trend is just as real. Our state is experiencing a significant workforce shortage, especially affecting dental hygiene and assisting roles. In a recent Minnesota Dental Association member survey, about two-thirds of dentists described recruitment for hygienists and assistants as “extremely challenging” or “very challenging.” Many offices have essentially “given up.” https://www.mndental.org/news/2024/03/mda-spearheads-introduction-of-legislation-seeking-funding-for-dental-academic-institutions
Some Minnesota practices have been even forced to cut their hours due to staff shortages, with patients being scheduled months in advance for hygiene visits. You may well have experienced this firsthand, even at Eggert Family Dentistry, where we are feeling these effects too and are unfortunately finding longer delays and difficulty booking routine recare visits.
At Eggert Family Dentistry in North Oaks, MN, we’ve observed an increasing number of dental hygienists opting for flexible, temporary work, moving between offices rather than committing to one practice exclusively. While we understand the desire for flexibility in this challenging job market, this trend will disrupt continuity of care. We are committed to the highest level of care and work hard to build a strong, ongoing relationship with you. We want to be able to truly understand your unique oral health needs, all the while, keeping dental care as affordable as possible.
We want you to know how much we value our magnificent hygienists for their professional commitment because they truly are fully dedicated to your oral health. While we actively work to hire another full-time hygienist, we ask for your patience during this transition. You will find that rescheduling a recare appointment might put you out many months. Rest assured, we’re doing everything we can—we’re opening up more recare slots as soon as possible and even the doctors are stepping in to provide hygiene services occasionally to help fill the gap.
We will do our best to contact you when new appointments are available, but we do not have the resources to continuously make calls to change appointments. To help you stay flexible, we encourage you to use our online scheduling request feature, which can be found on our website, https://schedule.solutionreach.com/scheduling/subscriber/46926/scheduler. This tool will allow you to check for earlier openings. We appreciate your understanding and partnership—together, we’ll navigate this shortage and continue to ensure your oral health remains our top priority. In the meantime, if you know of any dental hygienist ready and willing to work with us at Eggert Family Dentistry where we are a great group of highly skilled professionals, seeking to provide “Dentistry for a Lifetime of Smiles,” please get them in touch with Dr. Elizabeth Eggert at 651-482-8412. We look forward to using our network of patients to help us find our next magnificent team member. Your referral to our office would mean the world to us!