By Christian Coachman
⋅ 7 min read
⋅ 17 May 2024
It’s a common belief that doing guided dentistry is more expensive than a standard way of working. But when we stop to compare the impact of guided procedures not just financially, but also in terms of our time, our stress levels and our patient’s experience, it becomes less clear cut. For example, if using an appliance reduces the time spent on a procedure by half, does this justify the cost?
In this article we will take a closer look at some of the expenses involved in guided dentistry compared with just 5 common issues that we can avoid by adopting guided procedures in our daily work.
Do we incur extra costs when doing guided dentistry?
A sticking point for many when it comes to switching to a guided way of working is the perceived extra costs involved in the process. It’s true that at a first glance, there are expenses that can be avoided by following a standard way of working. Just some of these include:
Intraoral scanning
The initial outlay of buying an intraoral scanner is of course one of the first costs to consider. In addition, each time you scan a patient for your case, you need to share this scan with someone who will build the smile design and the treatment plan, for which there will usually be a cost.
Planning service
As previously mentioned, there will be a cost to using a service, such as the DSD Planning Center, who will plan the treatment and then manufacture the guides that will help you to execute it with high precision. It’s also worth considering the shipping costs of having the products sent to your clinic.
3D printing
If you choose instead to print your own guides in house, costs include the initial purchase of the 3D printer and the materials, though you will avoid the expense of having the guide manufactured for you and sent out to you.
However, while these costs are certainly ones to consider when working with guided dentistry, there are numerous benefits to be gained from being able to execute on our treatment plan in a precise way, in less time.
Here are just 5 issues you can avoid by incorporating guided dentistry into your workflows:
1. Decision making in the patient’s mouth
It takes confidence and experience to feel extremely secure in the decisions you are making in the moment. And have you ever made a decision which hasn’t turned out to be exactly what you are expecting, and had to improvise? When the patient is right there in front of you, this can be a moment of immense pressure.
There’s no denying that it is perfectly possible as a great clinician to deliver excellent results for our patients without guided dentistry. However, it’s also true that a standard way of working, in which the majority of our decisions are made once the patient is already in the chair in front of us, can be a cause of undue stress.
By doing guided dentistry, the decision making process takes place on the computer - not in the patient’s mouth - which can not only help us better manage our chairside time but increase our feeling of control and improve our experience throughout the procedure.
To discover for yourself the impact guided protocols could have on the predictability and efficiency of your clinical execution – and how much you could lower your stress levels by – take a look at our Guided Dentistry Certification now.
2. Fixing unexpected problems
Often when a clinician says they can do the work without paying extra for a guided device, this is true – but it can mean they are not analyzing all the possible issues they may face in advance. As mentioned above, this can increase not just stress but the time spent on the procedure when more decisions have to be made in the mouth. And this can be increased when we face issues that require us to bring the patient back.
Using a device can often mean that we are able to execute faster, with greater precision and less stress, because the issues have been addressed and dealt with before the patient even arrives in your office.
And through a guided way of working, fixing unexpected problems that come up months or even years later can be accurate, predictable and quick when we are able to use the digital project to give the patient back a standard of quality equal to the original results.
3. Scheduling additional appointments
When we are required to redo or finetune things, it’s all about the cost of chair time –and this is something that many of us don’t consider: exactly how expensive is an hour of our chair time? Bringing the patient back means incurring the cost of another appointment not just for us but for our team – not to mention the cost of extra materials such as anesthesia.
And when we consider that during this time we are also missing out on the opportunity to treat another patient, this becomes even more significant.
Using guided procedures can help us to avoid repetitions throughout the treatment process which has a positive impact not just on costs but also patient satisfaction.
4. Not knowing if you will receive what you want from your lab
Do you trust that what you receive from your lab will always be what you are expecting?
Not being able to fully rely on the results you receive from the lab is a common frustration for dentists that can cause a great deal of stress. We request a product from the lab but can’t be 100% sure that it is what we want, and in the meantime we know that any errors will not only require extra chair time to fix, but that we are the one who needs to explain and apologize to the patient – despite the fact that this is outside of our control.
Saving the time and energy you spend worrying about the results you receive from your lab can go a long way towards helping you take full advantage of your time.
5. High patient anxiety
Imagine you go to buy a car, and the dealer starts talking to you about how he is going to find the ideal car for you – the leather will be beautiful, the color will be exactly what you want and it will make you feel great. But at the end of the day, you haven’t seen a car – and you have to pay up front.
This is how dentistry can feel to patients - in a standard way of working we simply explain our idea to them using clinical terms and hand gestures, and expect that they will believe in us and trust us enough to go ahead with treatment.
Many times patients decline treatment not because they can’t afford it but because they don’t understand what we are offering. They don’t have clear expectations for the process and are unsure whether the final result will be what they want.
Imagine the impact on patient trust and confidence - and case acceptance - if they could not only view the final result before the treatment begins, but know what to expect from every appointment and understand that the doctor is following a plan that has addressed any issues in advance.
Save your most valuable time with guided dentistry
What is the impact of incorporating guided procedures on our time? When it comes to guided dentistry, the extra time we spend is what we refer to as the core of the core of DSD: the inter-appointment process. This is spent planning, preparing, designing and decision making in advance so that when your patient arrives, you can execute the treatment accurately in less time, with less stress.
But while this is certainly an additional time that we are not used to spending on a case, the key thing to consider is that this is not clinical chair time. And when as a clinician our most expensive time is chair time, anything we can do in advance to reduce that is going to positively impact on our costs.
How to incorporate the price of guides in your treatment
Despite the numerous benefits of incorporating guided procedures, it’s true that the costs for the design and manufacture of the guides are an ‘extra’. However, rather than explaining it as such to your patient, we believe in presenting the costs of the treatment plan as a whole so that it becomes one more piece of the puzzle.
The important thing to remember is the need to spend time emphasizing the value of the guides as a differential factor and educating patients on accuracy, reduced stress and improved experience.
Learn more about guided dentistry
If you are interested in learning where you could be implementing efficient and cost-effective solutions to reduce stress and save time during clinical execution, our online Guided Dentistry Certification can help you.
Find out more about it by talking to an advisor or exploring the certification now.
