Dental practice economics
DentistOpFlow
Cost-and-margin software that tells a dental practice what each procedure costs to deliver, and which of its fees are quietly losing money.
The gap we found
A dental practice already runs two good systems. Practice-management software records what was charged, by whom, to which patient. Accounting records what was spent, in total, by category. Both are accurate. Neither one holds the number an owner actually needs.
That number is the loaded cost of a single procedure: the supplies consumed, the lab work, the chair time, the clinical and admin wages attached to it, the equipment it depends on, and the share of overhead it should carry. Without it, a fee schedule is a guess dressed up as policy.
Fees are also not set by the practice. They follow association guides and insurer schedules that move on their own timetable, while wages, lab prices and supply costs move on theirs. The two drift apart quietly, procedure by procedure.
The research finding that shaped the product: the procedures losing money are rarely the ones an owner would name. High-volume, low-complexity work is where the margin usually leaks, and it leaks in a way no monthly P&L will surface, because in aggregate the practice still looks profitable.
What the software does
Loaded cost per procedure
Maps supplier invoices, chair time, lab fees, equipment and overhead onto every procedure code to produce an estimated cost and margin, the number neither existing system holds.
Below-cost flagging
Procedures whose fee falls below their estimated cost are flagged automatically and ranked, so a practice knows which to revisit first rather than reviewing all of them.
Fee-adequacy scoring
Tracks whether a fee is keeping pace with the costs beneath it, and explains the drift in plain language rather than in a variance table.
What-if modelling
Model a wage increase, a lab price rise, a new machine or an extra chair, and see the effect on estimated margin before signing anything.
Role-based views
Owners, associates and accountants each see the view appropriate to them: the same underlying numbers, filtered by what that role is entitled to.
No migration required
Works alongside the practice-management and accounting systems already in place. Invoices come in by CSV, PDF or manual entry, and practice data stays in the practice’s own storage.
How a practice starts
01
Test one fee
The Practice Cost Evaluator prices a single procedure with no login and no data, to see whether the answer is worth pursuing.
02
Connect the invoices
Supplier invoices, payroll and lab bills already exist. They come in by CSV, PDF or manual entry, with nothing migrated or re-keyed by hand.
03
See the margins
Every procedure code gets a loaded cost and margin, with below-target fees flagged and ranked by what they cost the practice.
04
Model the change
Before a wage increase, a new hire or a piece of equipment, run it through the model and see the margin effect first.
On the numbers
DentistOpFlow produces reference estimates for operational decision-making. They are not financial, legal, tax, accounting or investment advice, and the software is designed to say so plainly wherever a figure is shown.