Question

1. Over the past few decades dental practices have greatly altered how much of the total time of a typical dental visit is divided between the dentist and the dental hygienist.  For some of the dental procedures performed on patients (e.g. cleaning), experienced dental hygienists can perform the tasks approximately as well as the dentist can. Because dentists are more highly trained than dental hygienists, their marginal products are higher, particularly for more difficult procedures (tooth extraction). Many times when we go to the dentist nowadays, we typically see the dentist for a very short period of time relative to the total visit. Most procedures in a visit are performed by the hygienist. Decades ago, the dentist performed most of the procedures and there was a much more intensive use of their labor time for each visit.

Explain and Graph how this shift towards using more of the dental hygienists time (and less of the dentists time) for a typical visit might have been economically efficient.

Answer 1

Shift towards dental hygienists creates lower cost of operation as salaries paid are lower than to high level dnetist. The rationale behind dental hygienists is that 80 percent of patients come up woth basic dental problems which needs cleansing and hygiene treatments and hence dental hygienists act as consultant which civers the benefits a patient needs as low costs get passed onto lower prices.

Moreover, the dentists get paid on total cases undertaken daily and performance based which helps organisations maximise potential and lower manpower costs amd delays simultaneously making it optimal efficiency situation.

Thus in a healthcare organisation the peofit maximisation and optimal efficiency occurs when MRP= ARP marked as point P1 in above diagram.