Why do most dentists undervalue their skill and training by roughly fifty percent?
Because the profession trains them to think about fees in clinical terms while ignoring the operational and time realities those fees need to support. Most dentists arrive at fee setting through unconscious benchmarking against insurance reimbursement schedules, peer averages in their area, and what feels emotionally comfortable to quote. None of those anchors reflect the actual cost of delivering high-quality work over a career. The investment to acquire the skill, the years of post-graduate training, the equipment overhead, the team payroll, the malpractice exposure, the unknowns that complicate any case, and the per-hour cost of professional time at the doctor’s actual market rate, all get systematically underweighted. The result is fees that come in at roughly half of what they should be for the work being delivered. The fix is to do the math honestly and then hold the line on the resulting number. Patients who can afford competent comprehensive care will pay competent comprehensive fees. Patients who cannot were not the right fit anyway.
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.