ADA Survey Determines Some Interesting Percentages in Business Pandemic Recovery

 As a lifelong member of the American Dental Association, I've learned to appreciate the hard work the organization puts in and I've also learned that many of the services they provide happen behind the scenes where they aren't always readily visible.

One of those things that I'm grateful for is the ADA Health Policy Institute (HPI).  From the organization's website, here is there description of what the HPI provides:  

The Health Policy Institute (HPI) aims to be a thought leader and trusted source for critical policy knowledge related to the U.S. dental care system. HPI achieves this by generating, synthesizing, and disseminating innovative research on a variety of topics that are relevant to policy makers, health care advocates, and providers. The key issues that HPI focuses on include health policy reform, access to dental care, the dental workforce, dental care utilization and benefits, dental education, and oral health outcomes. HPI also offers credible, personalized consulting services using its data to provide clients with in-depth insights into the dental economic landscape.

Basically the HPI is a think tank that is composed of smart people that can see the trends in the numbers.  They can then use those insights to help provide critical information on economic and trends that could have an impact on the profession.

During my time practicing, I've received a few surveys to fill out, but I never really thought that much about the whole process or where that information was going.  I also never really gave much thought to what meaning could be derived from the numbers generated by the responses.

However, my thoughts on this changed dramatically during the spring of 2020.  As the pandemic began to take hold, the HPI began to routinely send surveys to track the profession.  The amount of data that was gathered allowed the ADA to make some pretty good predictions of where the profession was and where it was headed.

One of the interesting data points that has come out of all of these surveys recently is the outlook of doctors regarding the recovery of the profession.  Current survey data shows that 74.2% of general practitioners are either "somewhat confident" or "very confident" in the recovery of their practice in the remaining months of 2021.  Considering the pandemic and the effects it has had on the economy as a whole, I for one am optimistic about the profession when I see survey numbers like this.