Episode 170 - How to Price, Schedule, and Stage Vet Dental Procedures for Profit and Less Stress

🔗 Transform Your Vet Dentistry Workflow & Profitability
Learn to price smarter, schedule better, and deliver high-value care. Apply to the Veterinary Dental Practitioner Program today: https://ivdi.org/inv

Access more resources and CE courses for veterinary dentistry: https://veterinarydentistry.net/

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Host: Dr. Brett Beckman, DVM, FAVD, DAVDC, DAAPM
Welcome to The Vet Dental Show – the weekly podcast for veterinarians, technicians, and dental teams committed to excellence in veterinary dentistry. In this episode, Dr. Brett Beckman shares powerful strategies to improve profitability, reduce stress, and build structure around dental procedures in general practice.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✔️ Why beginners should limit to 2–3 surgical extractions per day
✔️ How to price dental procedures like high-end surgical services
✔️ What to factor into your pricing: radiographs, compromised tissue, time, and equipment
✔️ How to avoid scheduling chaos through pre-procedure staging
✔️ Creating predictable “dentistry days” with better team coordination
✔️ Why dentistry can and should be the most profitable service in your practice
✔️ How COHAT-based planning benefits patient care and client education

Key Takeaways:
✅ Surgical extractions require time, skill, and high-value pricing
✅ Charge appropriately – you're doing microsurgery, not just a cleaning
✅ Use staging (COHAT + treatment plan) to prevent underbooking or overloading
✅ Create stress-free, efficient dentistry days your team will appreciate
✅ Predictable schedules boost morale and enhance patient care
✅ Consider “dentistry weeks” or designated blocks to better manage your caseload
✅ Dentistry has low disposable costs – it can be your most profitable service

📘 Links & Resources for Veterinary Professionals:
Apply to the Veterinary Dental Practitioner Program ➡️ https://ivdi.org/inv
Explore Dr. Beckman’s veterinary dentistry CE courses ➡️ https://veterinarydentistry.net/

📩 Got questions or insights? Leave a comment below!
👍 Like this episode, 🔔 subscribe, and join us every Wednesday for new episodes packed with actionable dental insights.

#VetDentistry #VeterinaryDentalShow #DentalProcedurePricing #VetScheduling #COHAT #VeterinaryProfitability #VetPracticeTips #StagingDentistry #HighValueVetCare #DrBrettBeckman

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to the Vet Dental Show.
I'm Brett Beckman, board certifiedveterinary dentist, and we bring this
podcast to you every Wednesday as aveterinarian, as a technician, as a
dentistry team to help you be even betterif veterinary dentistry in your practice.

(00:20):
We're sponsored and partneredtoday with the Veterinary
Dental Practitioner Program.
If you're interested.
In being among the best anywherein general practice as a team in
veterinary dentistry, I inviteyou to request an invitation.

(00:43):
It's go to i d.org/i nv.
Like invitation first threeletters, INV, so IVDI, international
Veterinary Dentistry InstituteI vdi.org/ivy, and we'll get you

(01:07):
the information that you need.
I've often said that you reallydon't want to do more than two
procedures a day when you're startingout in basic surgical extractions.
And the reason being, if you havea small perio patient, chances are

(01:27):
you don't know what you're gettinginto until you get in there and
it's usually a couple hour procedurecould run into three very easily.
And so looking at that from a schedulingstandpoint, you can really only do two,
maybe three procedures a day if you are.

(01:47):
Transition phase between patients is veryquick and your radiographs are very quick.
We're, if we're talking about a twoto three hour procedure, we're talking
about the veterinarian sitting downand doing that procedure for two to
three hours, so let's qualify that.
What I would suggest is thatyou come up with a pricing

(02:12):
structure that is consistent with.
More than what you would charge hourlyfor general surgery because you're
doing microsurgery essentially, andyou're also doing surgery from a
surgical stand surgical extractionstandpoint that most practices do not do.

(02:32):
You also have to take into considerationthat this is a high end service.
This is not a spay.
This is not a neuter.
This is not a mass removal.
The on, on the skin.
This is a high-end service.
Like an orthopedic bone plating wouldbe that you have to have special

(02:53):
training, extensive training in orderto get good and get proficient at this.
So in that same population ofyour clients, that would opt for.
A bone plating procedure wouldbe that same client that opts for

(03:13):
full map radiographs and surgicalextractions with cleaning bone
contouring and proper closure.
So that you have to takethat into consideration.
Keep that in mind in whatwe're gonna be discussing here.
So in order for.

(03:34):
Us to justify those type of proceduresthat are higher end procedures,
we have to charge accordingly.
And that could be an hourly fee, it couldbe a fee per tooth based on mobility.
And also take into consideration sometimesthat tissue is really compromised,

(03:59):
whether it's gingival, recession.
Or proliferative or fryable that wasdifficult to debride and close properly.
So additional charges for that andtime allotted for that in the estimate.
All of those things are considerationsfor pricing, and people have different

(04:24):
pricing structures that they go by.
Bottom line is your two to three hour,let's say your two hour dentistry
procedure where you're doing multipleextractions and a general practice
would be as much as you would chargefor a complicated two hour surgical

(04:44):
procedure because you have all the sameadjunct, you have all the preparation.
In addition to that, you've gotsomething that you normally wouldn't
have in general surgery, andthat's the radiographs beforehand.
So those are gonna take some time,but that's not included in the two
hours that we've been talking about.
And so all those expenses that thepractice is going through need to be

(05:07):
charged adequately so that the practiceis profitable for that dentistry service.
And Deni, the dentistryservice is or shouldn't be.
The most profitable portion of yourpractice just because it is very minimal

(05:28):
disposable requirements as far as thingsthat you need to do the procedure.
You don't have bone plating, screws andplates, and all the expensive equipment
that you have with that, all the equipmentthat you buy when you set up your
dentistry service with your radiographyand your high speed delivery systems.

(05:48):
Your instruments shouldlast a very long time.
The disposables are minimal and includeburrs, instrument sharpening, if
you have that farmed out somewhere.
A lot of things to thinkabout from that perspective.
So the line item, bottom linehere is we need to charge

(06:11):
adequately for our procedures.
And we cannot just say.
This is what we would recommend thatyou charge for a two hour procedure.
That's all based on demographicsand your individual practice.
Individual wants, and the practiceneeds to be profitable when we're

(06:32):
looking at it from the number ofprocedures that we do per day.
You don't necessarily have to limitthat number of procedures to the two
procedures that I've talked about, andmaybe three procedures that I've talked
about in the context of being at theearly level of competency in surgical

(06:56):
extractions from a personal stand.
If you're more efficient than that,if you've got, had more training
and are comfortable getting through.
If those procedures comfortablewith your dentistry service and
their ability to take radiographsquickly, and the ability to keep the

(07:16):
patient's light under anesthesia withyour nerve blocks and minimize the
transition between patients, then youcan do multiple procedures per day.
And that's where it gets to the pointwhere it becomes very profitable
and justifiable for every practice.
That is capable of providing that service.

(07:40):
One thing that we have recommendedand that a lot of people are doing
and have done, and several of ourinstructors in the International
Veterinary Dentistry Institute andthe Veterinary Dental Practitioner
Program use a staging protocol so thatthey avoid a lot of the things that.

(08:04):
We run into, if we assume that twoor three, let's say two procedures,
is all we can do on, from a periostandpoint on our day tomorrow.
So we get those patients in and lo andbehold, one is just a lot of calculus
and a lot of cleaning and a littlebit of sub securage and root planing,

(08:31):
and we're out of there in an hour.
The next one is more consistent with whatwe've talked about and it takes us two
and a half hours to do that procedure.
We've scheduled the whole dayfor those two procedures to
last all day and they haven't.
So there it in lies a problem.
Look at the flip side of that.

(08:51):
We schedule three proceduresper day and we're again, at that
early level of competency and.
Each one of those is very difficult.
Multiple extractions, bad tissuethat take us three hours each.
So therein lies a big problembecause we're already way past the

(09:13):
time of the day that the staff iscomfortable and you're comfortable
being there, and that the owners arecomfortable leaving the patients at
your practice for that period of time.
So the way to avoid that.
Is the way that I alluded to just asecond ago, and that is to stage your
procedures by getting your patientsin, doing a coha and whatever numbers

(09:38):
you're comfortable with, where youdo the radiographic assessment.
You do the probing and the charting, youclean and then you wake the patient up and
then part of the discharge is going overthe treatment plan with the pet parent.
In order to plan for that next visit,which is two weeks to a month away

(10:03):
or whatever it might be, so thatyou actually can do the procedure.
And the our instructors that dothat are members in our BDP group
and our mastermind group that dothat are very comfortable with that.
And so are the pet parents.
It gives you an opportunity to do, oryour technician an opportunity to do some

(10:28):
really good client education, showing themexactly what's going on, showing them the
radiographs and the images you've taken,and really demonstrating the value that
you're gonna provide when you approachtheir pet in that two to four week
period or whatever that period might be.

(10:48):
So we gain a tremendous benefitthere from a planning standpoint.
And you may not be able to hitit just right on those first
couple of times, but from the
first part of that, which is the cohapart, how many of those do you want to

(11:10):
do a day or maybe you do one a day everyday, or however you wanna schedule that.
Then you have your dentistry two orthree days, every two or three weeks,
or maybe you have a dentistry weekthat you do nothing but dentistry that
you do those procedures and you knowwhat they are before they come in.
So you're very comfortable with estimatingthe amount of time that's gonna take

(11:34):
in order to perform those procedureson that, however many patients that is.
And so that is a really good way.
To sidestep that original part ofthe discussion of two and maybe three
patients a day if you are bringingthem in and doing the procedure and

(11:56):
not knowing what you're getting into.
So that's a way of addressing that.
That's been very effective and Iwould suggest that you try that
and use that, and many of youwill be comfortable with that.
As a specialist, we get people coming fromall over the state, sometimes from all

(12:16):
over the country, sometimes from othercountries, and so we get our patients
in and we have, we sometimes have somelong days, but usually we're out by four.
We maybe five in the afternoon,sometimes earlier, because we know how
many patients to take and how many, howquick we are at getting those patients.

(12:39):
Out of anesthesia and gettingthem back to the ERs and how
quick we are with the procedures.
We're not always right, but we're prettyclose so we don't have that luxury.
But you do in general practice.
So maybe a paradigm shift,maybe something that obviously
something that you need to discuss.
The entire dentistry staff and the powersthat be, practice manager, practice owner.

(13:04):
And maybe reset the whole approach tolooking at your dentistry procedures
and looking at your dentistry patients.
And guess what that, what else that does.
And those days are predictableand you don't have those patients

(13:25):
going over time beyond what younormally would finish the day at.
So your staff is much more comfortable.
They're less stressed, they're nottrying to hurry through procedures.
You have a good estimation about whatyou need to do to get each one done,
and you have the patients that are therethat are dropped off in the morning.

(13:49):
So all those can be prepared whilethat first one is being done.
So the technical staff can get cathetersin, get pre-meds, play onboard.
Get the tubes ready, everythingthat needs to be done to
make that transition minimal.
All of that can be done on that daythat you do your procedures after

(14:12):
you stage them with your coap.
So I hope that helps and get, gives youa perspective that you can draw from
and maybe change things in your practicefor the better so it's less stressful
for everybody in your dentistry service.
I hope you enjoyed that episode.
If you'd like more information aboutthe Veterinary Dental Practitioners

(14:36):
Program, please submit to requestan [e-mail] slash INV.