Why are dental prosthetic fees commonly undercharged across the profession?
Because patients are conditioned to believe surgery costs more than prosthetics, and dentists have internalized the same backward intuition rather than charging based on actual time, complexity, lab cost, and overhead. The clinical reality is the opposite of the patient assumption. Surgical placement of an implant is a clinically demanding but relatively contained procedure. The fee that supports it is generally well-calibrated across the profession. The prosthetic phase that follows is dramatically more involved. It takes more chair time across multiple visits, requires sophisticated laboratory work with its own labor and material costs, involves multiple try-in and refinement cycles, demands occlusal and aesthetic precision, and ties up team and overhead across weeks or months. The actual cost of delivering quality prosthetics often exceeds the cost of the surgical placement. Yet most fee schedules undercharge the prosthetic phase relative to the surgery, sometimes substantially. The fix is to recalibrate based on real cost data. Look back at completed cases, track the lab and supply costs, account for chair time honestly, and raise prosthetic fees to where they should sit. Patient resistance is much smaller than dentists assume.
If the answers you are finding here resonate with you, my team and I work with a small group of clients each year. The next step is a complimentary Discovery Consultation and Practice Review with Dr. McAnally.