HR for dental practices that need to recruit great hygienists and keep them.

Yes. Dental practices of all sizes. From a solo dentist with 5 employees to a DSO with 300. Use a PEO to get benefits shopped across the full carrier market, reduce workers' comp costs, and offload HR administration. The co-employment structure works well with the dental practice model, and it's a common arrangement among growing dental groups.

Associate dentist classification is one of the most significant compliance risks in the dental industry. The IRS applies a multi-factor test, and most associate dentist arrangements paid on a percentage-of-collections basis qualify for W2 employee status. Not 1099 contractor status. VertiSource establishes the correct employment structure, manages payroll under W2, and documents the employment relationship properly. Eliminating the reclassification exposure many dental practices unknowingly carry.

Yes, and this is often the number one reason dental practices come to us. Through our PEO, your practice accesses medical, dental, and vision plans shopped across all carriers, so a small practice sees options it could not pull together alone. We also set up 401(k) plans, HSAs, and voluntary benefits. The result is a benefits package competitive enough to recruit and retain hygienists in a tight labor market. Without the overhead of a large organization.

As a dental practice, you operate in a dual compliance environment. HIPAA for patient data and employment law for your staff. Our HR platform maintains strict separation between employee HR records and patient data. Employee records are stored on HIPAA-compliant infrastructure with role-based access controls, audit logs, and business associate agreement coverage where applicable. We know how dental practices are structured and design our HR systems to stay cleanly on the employment side.

Yes. Production-based compensation. Percentage of collections, base plus bonus, split provider arrangements. Requires payroll software and a payroll team that understand dental compensation models. We configure your payroll to handle these structures correctly, including proper withholding calculations, accurate W2 reporting for each provider, and clean integration with your practice management software's production data. We also support multi-doctor W2 staffs that include 1099 associate contracts where the IRS facts-and-circumstances analysis genuinely supports independent contractor status, and we document the rationale either way.

DSO roll-ups create a recurring HR integration problem: each acquired practice arrives with its own payroll provider, its own 401(k) plan, its own benefits carrier, and its own way of paying associates and hygienists. Our PEO model collapses all of that into one employer-of-record structure on day one of the close. Port payroll across, transition the staff to the group benefits and 401(k), harmonize the PTO and sick-leave policies against state law, bring credentialing under the central tracker, and unify the workers' comp policy with correct multi-class rating. The same playbook runs for the next acquisition and the one after that.

Yes. OSHA's Bloodborne Pathogens Standard (29 CFR 1910.1030) requires every dental practice with clinical staff to maintain an exposure control plan, offer hepatitis B vaccination (with a documented decline waiver for staff who refuse), maintain a sharps injury log, and document annual refresher training for every clinical employee. Our HR cloud assigns the training, records completion, stores the vaccination decision in the employee record, and surfaces upcoming refresher dates so the practice stays in front of the requirement instead of behind it. When OSHA visits, the file is already organized.

Yes. Many practices run a hybrid roster. Owner doctor on W2, full-time associates on W2 with production-based comp, and a small number of fill-in or specialty associates whose facts-and-circumstances genuinely support 1099 status (own equipment, control their own schedule, work for multiple practices, no exclusivity, etc.). We help your CPA and counsel document which providers belong in which bucket, run W2 payroll for the employee group, handle 1099 reporting for the contractor group, and keep the documentation clean for the next IRS or state agency review. For broader clinical-employer guidance see our healthcare industry page.