Productivity among Australian private general dental practitioners across a ten year period

Historical trends in Australia have shown declining levels of dentists' annual productivity from the 1960s to the 1980s. In a period of changing population demographics and oral health status appropriate levels of supply of dental services remains a key issue. Changes in practice patterns of dentists, through variables such as productivity, may influence the capacity to supply services. The aim of this study was to investigate time trends in productivity for private general practitioners at three points in time across a ten year period. A weighted, stratified random sample of Australian dentists was surveyed in 1983-84 (response rate 73 per cent), 1988 (response rate 75 per cent) and 1993-94 (response rate 74 per cent). The data were re-weighted to provide representative estimates for the age by sex distribution of private general practitioners in 1983, 1988 and 1993. Analysis of variance showed that the number of patient visits per year declined across the ten year period, related to parallel decreases in the number of patients treated per hour, while there was no significant difference during the period in the number of hours per year devoted to work.