How economic insecurity is affecting dentistry

A recent article in the Daily Mail got my attention. It is about the state of the United States economy. And it ratifies what I have felt this past year about the state of the dental economy.

The article quoted research showing that the number of people visiting restaurants was down about 2.6 percent for the first half of the year. A survey also reported that nearly 45 percent of consumers were planning to reduce or entirely cut out spending on eating out over the next six months. They quoted the owner of several restaurants commenting that people are “nervous about the economy.”

I believe that there are general nervous feelings that many people have about the economy. We have seen what seem to be the effects of this nervousness in our clients. While most of our clients seem to be doing well, we have had a handful of clients recently complaining about depressed business. Without exception, all of those clients have marketing targeting high-end services. We have a number of clients who are branded as providing basic bread-and-butter dentistry, and none of them have expressed to us any concern about filling their schedules.

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