How the lab can help you increase productivity

How long does it take you to seat a crown? Now imagine you can increase productivity and shave off some of the time it normally takes to perform a single-unit crown procedure. What would that mean to your patient—and your practice?

If you can perform a crown procedure faster, you can increase productivity and translate that time savings into increased profitability. Exactly how does a change in production affect your net income? Based on calculations by Sikka Software, the greatest impact on profitability comes from productivity, not reducing variable costs. That means a 5% increase in production results in a 12% increase in net income. Because 80% of your expenses are fixed, and won’t go up with an increase in production, much of that is pure profit. Other benefits of seating a crown faster include:

• An enhanced production schedule
• Reduced doctor and patient stress
• An incentivized staff with production bonuses
• Increased patient satisfaction

If seating a crown takes you more than 15-20 minutes, there’s an issue. The lab can help keep you increase productivity by checking all contacts on a solid model, sending all cases on functioning articulators and using 10x magnification for enhanced quality control. With help from the lab, you can reduce remakes to improve the efficiency of your practice. In fact, California Dental Arts was able to reduce remake percentages from 4% to 0.1% lab wide with digital impressions. Additionally, for prep and bite concerns, consider doing your own die trimming and mounting your own tricky cases.

When the doctor and lab work together, the odds of a successful restoration greatly improve. And successfully minimizing chair time means you can move onto the next patient, reduce patient recalls and grow your practice.