By Dr. Robert Kelly, D.M.D.
Dentistry, like many industries, is changing with break-neck speed. Everything from patient experience, insurance participation, costs, and technology are all things that have changed dramatically over the past few decades. According to dental economists, the changes in the dental industry are not going to slow down anytime soon. In fact, they may speed up!
One change happening as we speak is the population demographic make-up of dentists themselves. This has the ability to again dramatically increase the rapid speed of changes in the delivery of oral health care to patients.
A thoughtfully researched article in the latest Journal of the American Dental Association highlights the generational shift occurring in our society. More specifically, we are seeing the retirement of the large “Baby Boomer” generation of dentists and the rapid increase of the very young dentist population. This is due in large part to the Baby Boomer dentists hitting retirement age and then expansion of dental school enrollment in the past decade.
For example, in 2001 many dentists were in their 40s. There were not many dentists in their 30s or 60s. Fast forward to the present day and it’s the opposite. There are now two large groups of dentists — those in their 30s and those in their 60s. I didn’t know this till I read this article but apparently I am in a rare dentist age category in the 40s-50s!
As more and more dentists in their 60s retire over the next 5 years and the increased dental school graduation rates continue to climb, we will really start to see the population of dentists in this country get younger and younger. This likely will lead to even more rapid changes in the utilization of technology in the dental office, as the younger generation as a whole has adopted technology in the dental office quicker. One example is that there is already AI technology being built into many dental software and dental equipment.
Another big demographic change happening with this generational change is the changes in race and gender in the dental workforce. Currently the dentists 65 and older are only 15% women and 81% white. This trend has reversed now though as the current graduating dental school classes are 55% female and 48% white. For the past few years now, a majority of dentists out of dental school are female and this seems to be increasing a little each year.
The article in the American Dental Association did not make any claims as to these changes being better or worse for anyone but simply to highlight the major changes happening. It also sought to highlight that these demographic changes will have profound impacts on the industry as a whole due to recent historical trends of practice modalities that younger and female dentists tend to prefer.
As I reflect on the future of dentistry it is impossible to predict what it will be like far into the future. But I do believe it is safe to say that dentistry has come a long way from the time I was a child, and consequently will probably march on with progress in the future as well.