Written from a real dental practice, for real dentists. No theory. No consulting speak. Just honest thinking about how to build fees that work for everyone.
Patients arrive at the records appointment with their coat off, expecting the tooth. The healing phase, the lab phase and the three try-ins on a single anterior unit are real work that no code-based plan has anywhere to print.
How Open Dental priorities, saved plans and subtotals actually work, the Update Fees trap that rewrites a quoted fee, and why the total at the bottom still is not the cost of the case.
How Dentrix cases and visits work, how to print subtotals by visit, why case severity forces you to split cases, and the estimate reasoning that appears on screen but never on the patient's copy.
How Eaglesoft phases and the presentation work, how Suppress Item Detail prints phase subtotals without line-item fees, and why phase order and insurance estimation order are not the same thing.
Curve's patient-friendly procedure names, drag and drop between visits, and the Insurance Discount Estimate line, alongside the estimate accuracy and multiple-options frustrations Curve users post publicly.
There's a quiet truth in most dental practices — on the big cases, your treatment coordinator has a more accurate read on chair time than the doctor. Here's why, what the research says about clinician gut, and how to put that knowledge to work.
When you're chairside, your TC is free; when your TC is checking a patient in or out, you're free. So complex cases default to whatever the software says. Here's the cloud-based fix that lets your TC build the fee and you edit it live — no meeting required.
An immediate denture looks like one line and a few extraction codes — but a loose perio tooth and a dense-bone surgical extraction get the same code and the same fee. Here's what your software can't see, and why your treatment coordinator can price it better than either of you thinks.
Give a discounted fee on a big case, then watch the patient drop out before the phases where your profit actually lived? Here's how pricing phase by phase keeps every stage profitable on its own.
Your PMS prices the code, not the case — so it overprices your routine work and underprices your complex work, in both directions at once. Here's why, and the fix.
Two eight-unit veneer cases with the same tooth numbers can be three hours apart in chair time — yet your PMS charges them the same. Here's where the time hides, and what it's quietly costing you.
Most dentists only find out a case wasn't profitable after the patient leaves. Here's what happens when you track time and costs as the case unfolds — and how every case becomes a lesson for the next.
Two cases can look identical on paper and be completely different to treat. You already know they should be priced differently — but has anyone ever shown you how, instead of just taking the number your PMS gives you?
Most dentists are unknowingly pricing patients out of the care they need — not out of greed, but because no one ever gave them a better tool. Here's what changes when you group dentistry the right way.