Overview
Setting your practice’s private and plan dental fees is a fundamental part of building your dental business and requires balancing financial sustainability with market competitiveness. Your pricing structure must cover your operating costs, include a buffer for unexpected expenses or quieter periods, and reflect what your position is within the local dental market. Being competitive does not necessarily mean that you need to be the cheapest in the area. It means ensuring that your fees accurately reflect the value and experience you provide at your practice.
If you communicate your value effectively and your patients are aligned with your practice ethos, you can feel confident in setting fees that support your business and reflect your worth.
This advice offers guidance on how you can approach fee setting. Many practices use a structured fee model with a mix of fixed-price items and varying hourly rates across different surgeries. This could cover things such as hygienist surgeries, which often operate at different hourly rates compared with dentist surgeries. You may also choose to blend models, for instance, applying a slightly lower hourly rate for examinations or non-treatment appointments, balanced by a higher rate for treatment sessions, to achieve your overall required hourly rate.
Once you understand what your required income is, you will also need to consider:
- The cost per procedure
- The typical length of each appointment
- The number and the mix of each appointment type.
Considering all of these factors together will help you to develop a sustainable and realistic pricing structure for your practice.
Some of your associates may prefer to set their own hourly rates, which makes having an accurate understanding of your operating costs even more important. Using tools like our operating costs calculator, puts you in a strong position to have transparent discussions about income requirements and negotiate fair, commercially realistic, arrangements.
