Dental Industry Issues In Japan: Aging Staff And High Prices

Even though the dental industry is receiving more and more affordable technologies and overall population wealth growth, making dental services more accessible for patients, this industry is still experiencing a list of problems, even in well-developed countries.

For instance, recently, Teikoku Databank Ltd – a Japanese research organization – published a report revealing the dental business crisis in the country. As it turned out, in 2024, between January and October, about 126 dental facilities closed and bankrupted – 1,8 times more than in the same period last year. All these clinics had more than $65,000 in liabilities.

What's the problem?

According to Teikoku Databank representatives, two key problems have led to the worsening of the dental business climate.

The first one is aging staff members; the average age of the closed clinic worker was about 69.3 years. Moreover, 54% of dental technicians in the country are older than 50. This situation decreases the number of specialists in the country – for instance, the local health ministry reported about 33,000 actual technicians available to craft silver tooth crowns and perform other dental work in 2022, which is 5% less than in 2020.

The second important factor that affected the industry is the increased price of alloys and other compounds used during different types of dental treatment. Clinics are trying to reach cutting-edge materials to attract the attention and trust of their patients, increasing their expenses and thus decreasing incomes. Also, this factor affects the rising of treatment prices, for instance:

• Placing a crown on a front tooth will cost you about $900-1,150 (140,000 – 180,000 yen)
• back tooth filling costs about $500-900 (80,000 –140,000)

All these factors lead to labor shortages in the industry. To solve the issue, local dental facilities started integrating technologies from leading US manufacturers and worldwide leaders in dental equipment production. The most notable example is a collaboration between Takabe Dental Clinic in Tokyo and  Dentsply Sirona, which was established in 2023.

Still, Japan is not alone among developed economies that face problems with dental services providing. For instance, Great Britain is experiencing complications with National Health Services availableness, pushing people into "fraudsters' hands."