Bonded Dental Staffing Triggers Calculator:

https://main-staffing-trigger-v3-135248227012.us-west1.run.app/

Most practices don’t have a “staffing problem.” They have a guessing problem.

You feel slammed, hygiene is booked out, phones are crazy, and the instinct is: “We need to hire.” Then you add another body, payroll jumps, margins shrink, and somehow you’re still stressed.

You didn’t need more people. You needed better math.

That’s what the Staffing Trigger Calculator is for: one tool that tells you, in plain English, “Hire,” “Add hours,” or “Fix your ops first” for each role: associate, hygienist, assistant, and front desk.

What the Staffing Trigger Calculator actually does

The calculator looks at three things per role:

1. •

   Capacity & Utilization

   • •How far out you’re booked (new patients, recall, elective treatment)
   • •% of schedule filled in the next 4–8 weeks
   • •Ops, hours, and average appointment length
2. •

   Throughput & Show Rate

   • •Collections per doctor day
   • •Hygiene visits per day
   • •No‑show rate and calls going to voicemail
3. •

   Economics

   • •What each seat produces per day (collections / gross profit)
   • •What that role costs per day
     

Then it scores each role and tells you:

• •Hire now
• •Add/shift hours
• •Or don’t hire – fix scheduling, show rate, or routing first

This removes the “I feel busy” emotion and replaces it with a capacity and profit check.

What you’ll plug in (takes ~5 minutes)

For the last 90 days, you enter:

• •For doctors: collections/day, days booked out, % of schedule filled, number of ops, days/hours open.
• •For hygiene: hygiene collections/day, weeks recall is booked, hygiene ops and appt length.
• •For assistants: doc collections/day on fully staffed vs understaffed days.
• •For front desk: calls to voicemail %, response time to new inquiries, show rate, and AR days.

The calculator then:

• •Calculates real capacity (how much room is left)
• •Calculates vacancy cost/day for each seat
• •Flags where you’re actually constrained: doctor time, hygiene, chair turnover, or phones/admin.

How to interpret the results

For each role you’ll see something like:

• •

  Associate

  • •“Booked 90%+ next 6 weeks, new patients >2 weeks out, doc checks bottlenecked.”
  • •Verdict: You’re at or over capacity. Either add doctor time or hire.
• •

  Hygienist

  • •“Recall booked 3+ weeks, hygiene at 92% capacity.”
  • •Verdict: Add hygiene hours (evenings/Saturday) or hire hygiene before you add more doctor time.
• •

  Assistant

  • •“Doc collections drop $X/day on days you’re short an assistant.”
  • •Verdict: If that delta minus assistant cost is positive, hire / add a float. If not, fix room turnover first.
• •

  Front Desk

  • •“20% of calls go to voicemail, show rate 65%, AR days 55+.”
  • •Verdict: You don’t need more ops; you’re leaking demand at the front. Fix phones and reminders before adding bodies.

You get a simple output: Hire / Add Hours / Optimize First plus the 1–3 concrete things to fix if it says “optimize.”

Why this beats “we’re busy, let’s hire”

• •You only hire when you’re actually at capacity, not just when the day feels crazy.
• •You see how much each empty chair (or missing assistant/front desk) costs per day, so you can justify or delay a hire with real numbers.
• •You stop guessing which role to fill first. The calculator shows where the bottleneck really is.

Use the Staffing Trigger Calculator, make the decision with math, then if you truly need people, use Bonded to actually find them.

If you run a dental office and you’re not sure whether to hire or just tighten up your systems, plug your last 90 days into the calculator and let the numbers tell you before you add another paycheck to payroll.

Open the calculator here https://main-staffing-trigger-v3-135248227012.us-west1.run.app/ → then create a free Bonded account to save your results https://bonded-dental.com⁠⁠.