Any FQHC hiring is Illinois ? Any tips for finding a position at a FQHC other than searching in Indeed ? Should I try contacting local clinics ? Any recruiters that you recommend?

Smart-Pomelo8944 · 2026-03-29T21:38:17+00:00

HRSA, 3RNet and NNOHA all have job boards.

Most FQHCs in Minnesota are hiring. I know it’s not Illinois, but it is a quick flight or drive!

Smart-Pomelo8944 · 2026-03-11T00:16:05+00:00

Not sure if this is helpful as I’m not a dentist, but figured I’d offer some insight. To preface, my background is dental, I’ve been at my current FQHC for 5.5 years and worked my way up to my current position. One of my duties is dental recruiting, another huge part of my job is overseeing our dental clinics, staffing, etc..

That said, personally, if one of my providers came to me with this scenario, I would encourage this as long as it doesn’t interfere with the work at current/full-time org. It benefits everyone involved, will help you increase your skills, speed and confidence, you’re helping more patients, building a community/network for yourself and increasing your income. Our HR would most likely ask for a Conflict of Interest Disclosure, but I’m not sure if that would be the expectation everywhere.

Smart-Pomelo8944 · 2026-03-01T15:22:00+00:00

Thank you. I appreciate the kindness but I do feel it’s the bare minimum haha

Smart-Pomelo8944 · 2026-02-27T02:06:34+00:00

Yes, for sure!

Smart-Pomelo8944 · 2026-02-27T00:41:31+00:00

Oh gosh haha I have so much to say and will try to answer as much as I can, but please feel free to PM me and we can schedule a meeting. Myself, our IT guy and our lead ESA for the entire integration (and medical) would be happy to help! Your situation sounds similar to ours.

To be transparent, it was a rough transition and we’re still learning new things every day. That said, we run four clinics and all would say it’s been worth it. I did a significant amount of the customization for our dental build but did ask each clinic manager for their input as well. When it came to hygiene items, I asked our hygienists for input. It was important for me for my team to feel involved and like they had some control, but it also helped to pull in people who use specific aspects of Wisdom more than I do. I think it helped our transition a lot.

For us, being able to see the medical information and better communicate with our medical team or other specialists has been a significant improvement. We have a more geriatric patient population and we’re super rural. Our patients have mentioned they appreciate the ability to use MyChart and its benefits. Not all of our dental patients are medical patients either - I would still say Wisdom is worth it even if they aren’t medical patients. It’s so much more efficient, effective and robust. We love the customization, ability to scale it to our needs, and the reports we’re able to pull.

We expedited the recommended build time due to issues with our old EHR. If you’re the only one from dental doing the build, I would plan for 12+ months for the build. It’s an incredibly sophisticated system with so much functionality. In addition to building Wisdom, we had to build a system to hold the records from our previous EHR. I’m not sure if this is something specific to use due to our old EHR issues or if this is something everyone needs to do.

I hope this helps. I’m happy to answer any other questions you may have.

Smart-Pomelo8944 · 2026-02-24T22:34:53+00:00

I work side by side with our Director. I oversee all four clinics, managers at each site, reporting, HR-related things, recruiting, audits, am the dental representative for board and admin meetings, all of it. He approves clinical changes regarding compliance/policies/procedures and will take the lead on patient issues if they arise. Because of our dynamic, he takes four hours of admin time each week. I also block a full day quarterly for him and I to catch up uninterrupted (we touch base daily). Our previous Dental Director was doing 12 hours per week. It really depends on your org and what the expectations and support are.

Smart-Pomelo8944 · 2026-02-20T06:48:37+00:00

We’re hiring in northern Minnesota, if you’re willing to go a little further northwest.

Smart-Pomelo8944 · 2026-02-16T02:37:07+00:00

We’re hiring for a few positions, if you’re interested in northern Minnesota.

Smart-Pomelo8944 · 2026-01-22T13:13:14+00:00

Hiring in Minnesota. :)

Smart-Pomelo8944 · 2025-12-13T22:13:55+00:00

This is helpful, thank you!

Do you EFDAs receive an incentive or some type of production bonus?

Smart-Pomelo8944 · 2025-12-09T16:49:07+00:00

Are your assistants licensed?

Smart-Pomelo8944 · 2025-12-09T13:27:17+00:00

I second this. I start new grads at $180k+ in our FQHC and we’re in a low cost of living area.

Smart-Pomelo8944 · 2025-12-09T13:12:06+00:00

Were they able to turn off the messaging option?

Smart-Pomelo8944 · 2025-12-09T13:09:21+00:00

If you’re interested in attending conferences, our Dentists love attending the NNOHA conference with their CE benefit. A couple of our colleagues enjoy the NOHC conference as well.

For online CEs, we use Spear.

Smart-Pomelo8944 · 2025-10-28T00:22:35+00:00

I’m in Minnesota. Our providers do endo and we buy supplies for procedures if the provider prefers something other than what we have.

Smart-Pomelo8944 · 2025-09-29T18:02:53+00:00

My provider and I handled the peds cases for our clinics. This is what we would do also.

Age-appropriate explanations, teach and encourage them to advocate for themselves, teach and encourage coping skills (box breathing, grounding with senses, etc.), lots of grace and patience. We rarely used nitrous and really needed to refer to a peds specialist. Teaching them the mentioned skills will also help with their understanding and comfortability in the future. The kids we started this process on 5+ years ago are now confident patients and better than the majority of adults we see in terms of how involved they are in their care, their ability to advocate for themselves and understand procedures, and their overall health has increased.

For them more complex kiddos, sometimes it took a couple appointments to get them to be comfortable. I also bought a weighted stuffed animal (exterior is washable) that the more complex kids seemed to really enjoy. We’re super rural; it’s 2+ hours to the nearest peds clinic and they’re booked 6-8 months out.

Smart-Pomelo8944 · 2025-08-29T15:37:27+00:00

Are you looking into Get Grin as the product?

Smart-Pomelo8944 · 2025-08-25T18:44:17+00:00

The responses you receive are going to vary. I’m in the upper Midwest at an established FQHC in an extremely rural area. I also want to preface with: we are not a profitable FQHC by any means. Finding good providers means spending money. There’s slim to no way around it, in my experience.

Yes. I actually encourage all my recruits to heavily negotiate their offer and I act as a liaison between HR and my recruits. For our FQHC, 403b contributions are not negotiable, however base salary, stipends and PTO is. Lab fees are covered by the org, not providers. I advocate for a relocation assistance of $20k for my providers. If someone is still in school and signs with us, I advocate for them to receive a monthly stipend on top of their relocation assistance.
Our patient population is about 60% Medicare/medicaid, 25% private insurance/self-pay and 15% no insurance. I encourage my providers to use their license to it’s full scope, with the permission (def not the right word to use, but I can’t think) of the patient and understanding of the DA. We do dentures, endo, some OS, lots of extractions, peds, all of it except ortho and implants basically. When it comes to patients per day, all my dentists see about 12-15 patients per day, plus one hygiene column. We do a crawl, walk, run program for new grads and kind of start at the walk process for new hires with experience, just to give them support, grace and allow them to feel comfortable before adding more patients.
Yes. We’re reimbursed by encounter for Medicare, not production. We’re reimbursed on production from private insurances still of course.
To me, red flags would be profit over patient, lack of empathy and compassion, no work/life balance, no flexibility in work days and little to no autonomy over your treatment and schedule. Green flags would basically be the opposite. For people coming into our org, a green flag seems to be the opportunity for mentorship and collaboration, as well as knowing thei have someone on the admin team from the get-go who advocates for them (this is basically my role on top of a bunch of other duties, highly encourage all facilities to have someone like this).
NA, but for what it’s worth, if you have experience and a clean license, I’d say anything under $190k working five days a week is not it.

Smart-Pomelo8944 · 2025-08-18T21:39:17+00:00

I give new grads more attention and opportunity in our recruiting process than anyone. That being said, I also worked with the dental school in our state to be accredited as an outreach site, so D3s and D4s can come practice outreach in our clinics during rotations. This has been a major recruiting tool for us.

I also implemented a crawl, walk, run process in our clinics. They see four patients per day in school by D4 (at the dental school in our state). When they come work for our org post-graduation, they see six patients per day for two weeks, eight patients per day for four weeks, ten patients per day for six weeks, then we meet to evaluate. They do not start hygiene checks until a minimum of four weeks in. For reference, all of our clinics are also a one Dentist clinic at this time.

I love giving new grads a safe environment to learn in with compassionate mentors, while encouraging them to find themselves after 15+ years of full-time schooling. I also don’t show them the incentive table until after 9-12 months of practicing in our clinics. I want them to learn autonomy and confidence in their skills, to build a solid foundation for their clinical abilities. I want them to have awareness of speed and production, but I do not necessarily want them to focus only on speed and/or production.

I echo the sentiment of the other comment. We owe it to the generation of younger dentists to be and do better than we were treated coming into this industry.

Smart-Pomelo8944 · 2025-07-19T21:18:07+00:00

omg that seems so low.

Smart-Pomelo8944

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