Free HR calculator
Hygienist Vacancy Cost Calculator
An open hygiene column is not a payroll savings. It is canceled recall, compressed schedules, and production that never happens. This calculator turns your hygiene headcount, turnover, time to fill, and pay into a yearly vacancy cost. It also shows what you save by filling faster or losing fewer hygienists.
Before you start
What you will need. Hygienists on staff, Annual hygienist turnover, Avg. time to fill, Hygienist pay
Your workforce
Advanced options
Annual vacancy cost
The method
What hygienist vacancy cost is and how to use it
An open hygiene role is a seat that was scheduled to produce and is not producing. Recall appointments get pushed, the doctor’s exam flow thins out, and some patients drift to whoever can see them sooner. Vacancy cost puts a dollar figure on that drain so you can compare it to what you spend on recruiting, retention, and temp coverage.
How this is calculated
How the calculation works
Start with the loaded daily pay for the role: pay plus benefits, divided by working days per year. The vacancy cost rate scales it to reflect what the seat produces. For hygiene, where the column directly drives production, the right rate is usually well above 100%. Multiply daily cost by your time to fill for the cost per vacancy. Then multiply by vacancies per year, which is hygiene headcount times turnover, for the annual figure.
Calibrate the rate with your own production
No benchmark replaces your reports. Pull the average daily production of a hygiene column from your practice management software. Subtract what you recover by rebooking into other columns, then divide the remainder by loaded daily pay. That percentage is your vacancy cost rate. Practices with full recall and no slack elsewhere land high. Practices that can absorb patients land lower.
The two levers
Annual vacancy cost depends on exactly two things: how often hygienists leave and how long the column sits empty. The market is tight in both directions. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 7% growth for dental hygienists from 2024 to 2034, with about 15,300 openings per year on average. The practices that win lose fewer hygienists and run a faster, better organized search when they do.
Carry this into the decision
Fill the chair faster than the vacancy costs
The Dental Hiring Kit gives you the job posts, interview guides, and scorecards to hire a hygienist before the empty chair runs up the bill this calculator just showed.
$59. 30 days. Reply to your receipt or email support@truestephr.com for a full refund. No form or explanation is required, and you keep the files.
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Put your own numbers in and read the result on screen.
Put your own numbers in and read the result on screen.
Put your own numbers in and read the result on screen.
Put your own numbers in and read the result on screen.
Put your own numbers in and read the result on screen.
This tool estimates from the figures you enter. It is general information rather than legal, tax, or accounting advice, so check the result against your own records before you rely on it.