Dentals

RE: Dentals

FINNIGAN — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 11:18:22 GMT

thanks everyone, i will be bringing this up at our staff meeting

RE: Dentals

Sarah Lundstrom — Sun, 02 Aug 2020 16:22:18 GMT

Hi everyone. We have tried both systems over the years. We originally used to charge a fee for anaesthetic then add extra for extractions but the boss felt we should be timing our dentals and charging everything on time. We found this just didn't work for the reasons you have stated above - some vets are simply faster than others and it's unfair to penalise clients because they happen to have the "slow" vet operating. Equally, the faster vets used to get fed up with being allocated dentals all the time, just because they could complete them more quickly. This also didn't allow the slower vets to practise and thus get faster, so it became a vicious circle. We were even told we had to time our scale and polishes and charge accordingly. I accept that a scale and polish on a small dog can be completed much more quickly than on a bigger dog with larger teeth, but to do a thorough scale and polish on eg. a greyhound just became too expensive for clients to afford! Having to time everything also puts you under pressure to do a rushed job if you know that the client is on a tight budget.

We have now gone back to the original system of charging a set fee for anaesthetic with scale and polish, then we add extra for extractions in bands like Olivia has outlined above. We also have an extra charge for a surgical extractions. This means that a difficult canine doesn't get counted the same as a wobbly incisor.

No system is perfect, there are flaws whichever you choose. Personally though I prefer the system we are using now rather than charging everything by time alone.

Hope this helps - and that it makes sense!

RE: Dentals

apache — Sun, 02 Aug 2020 14:40:07 GMT

I forget the exact time boundaries but I think 'simple' is 20 mins of dental time - so a couple of simple extractions where not much effort required. Moderate includes 40 mins and then extensive 80 minutes. (I think, it's something like that). Then allow 15/20 mins on top for a through scale and polish, that is not included in those times.

I'm not sitting there with a stop watch so if you take 21 minutes it has to be a moderate one. I find it's usually pretty easy to chose one of the suitable fees, and much easier than trying to estimate how long it's going to take.

RE: Dentals

Olivia Coulton — Sat, 01 Aug 2020 08:35:23 GMT

I said about grade/number of teeth is then it is fair for everyone regardless on the time it takes as I have seen it in practice where clients learn very quickly who is the quickest at dentals and therefore always request them as they don't want to spend as much money if it is all done on time. Well obviously if you were to do the number of teeth you would adjust how your practice charges it by labelling it on what teeth are included rather than just a generic number for everything. How would you define simple, moderate and extensive though do you have a set thing everyone goes by? as everyone's perception is different to each others so one client could get charged for a simple-moderate and another client could get it charged it as a moderate to extensive based on their opinion.

RE: Dentals

apache — Fri, 31 Jul 2020 23:24:13 GMT

It's difficult. The money charged has to reflect the time taken to a degree - there is a huge skill/training issue if someone is taking 30mins to remove a tooth another vet can remove in 5! Not fair charging full time for a new grad - for example, but ultimately time taken determines the overall cost to the practice. I also don't like the generic idea of number of teeth - 4 broken canine teeth cost the same to remove as 4 wobbly incisors?!

We have:

scale & polish

scale polish & extract, simple, moderate and extensive. We also have a dental hourly rate we use to roughly check the right fee has been chosen. I think that is about the only way you can do it. For estimating it is usually pretty easy to quote a range of simple-moderate, moderate-extensive etc. If doing flaps and using more equipment that should be charged on top.

RE: Dentals

Cyonica — Fri, 31 Jul 2020 13:04:31 GMT

We've got a set fee for scale and polish which is the same regardless of breed or species, then any extraction time plus extra anaesthesia time etc. are priced as normal on top of that. I highly recommend if you use this system to give a realistic worst case and best case scenario to allow the owners to budget appropriately and to know what to expect. I'll be honest, due to usually under estimating costs, I'm not finding this system works well for us at all.

If there's a big skill/speed gap among your vets then Olivia's system where you go by number of teeth and complexity/type of extraction might work better for you.

RE: Dentals

Olivia Coulton — Fri, 31 Jul 2020 09:19:59 GMT

It depends on your practice policy but can you suggest something along the lines of having a basic charge for certain things. Such as charge total anaesthetic time, drugs, drugs to go home on plus then an extraction fee so have a fee for 1-4 extractions, 4-8 extractions and 8+ or have a dental grade where the fee is charged A,B,C depending on the grade so it is a set fee so it doesn't then matter how long one vet takes it is just a set fee and then this will help other staff and locums being able to estimate how much a dental would be for that client roughly. Would this be something that would work for your practice? hope this makes sense :D