How many dental labs should a practice use

Use as many labs as you have kinds of work that need different strengths, and no more than your team can track. For many practices that comes to two or three.

One lab is simple and leaves you exposed. Five labs give you choice and a morning of phone calls.

This guide covers why practices use more than one lab, what each extra lab costs, and a way to decide the right number for your own work.

Why one lab is seldom enough

Labs specialize, and so does the work a practice sends.

Dr. Joel Gaudet, the dentist who founded Tusko, describes his own split:

“I still use two or three different labs, because this lab is my favourite for implants, this one for crowns, and this one for dentures.”

Dr. Joel Gaudet, Wave Dentistry

Three reasons sit behind a choice like that.

• Different strengths. A lab that is superb at front teeth may not make dentures at all.
• Capacity. A small lab you love can be full in a busy month.
• Continuity. If your only lab closes for a holiday, or loses a key technician, your cases stop.

Labs are organized this way, and a good one will say which work it does best.

A practice with one lab also has nothing to compare it with. A second lab, even for a small share of work, shows what good looks like.

What each extra lab costs

A second or third lab is not free, even when its fees are the same. Each one adds a set of small jobs.

Our practice calculator assumes each lab beyond the first adds three minutes of staff time to every case. That is an assumption, and you can change it.

There is a quieter cost too. Work spread across many labs makes you a small account at each one.

A lab that sees your cases every week learns how you like them. A lab that sees two a year starts from the beginning each time.

Map your work before you decide

The right number comes out of your own cases. Spend half an hour with last quarter’s list.

Fill in every row. Then read down the last column.

A row that is going well needs no change. A row that is going badly, or has no good home, is where a new lab might help.

Count the labs in the third column. If the same kind of work appears under two labs for no clear reason, that is one to tidy.

A main lab and one or two specialists

A pattern that suits many practices is a main lab with specialists around it.

A main lab, with one or two labs around it

Three columns describe the labs a practice might use. The main lab takes the routine work, sees the practice every week and knows its preferences and delivery days. A specialist takes one kind of case the main lab does not lead on, such as front teeth that need custom shading, or dentures. A backup gets a few cases a year, so that it knows the practice when it is needed.

The main lab

Takes the routine work

• Sees you every week
• Knows your preferences
• Has your delivery days by heart

A specialist

Takes one kind of case

• Work the main lab does not lead on
• Front teeth that need custom shading, perhaps, or dentures

A backup

Gets a few cases a year

• Knows you when you need it

Make the split a rule. “Crowns go to one lab, dentures to another” is something a new assistant can follow on day one.

Tell each lab where it stands. A lab that knows it is your implant lab will invest in getting those cases right.

An example split

This is one way a general practice might divide its work. Yours will differ.

When to add a lab, and when to drop one

Change the number for a reason, and one lab at a time.

Add one when:

• You start offering work no current lab does well
• One kind of case keeps coming back for adjustment
• Your main lab’s dates have slipped for more than a month or two
• A new dentist joins with experience of a lab worth trying

Before you add, talk to the lab you have. A problem you have never mentioned is one it has had no chance to fix.

Run a new lab alongside the old for a few cases before you move a whole kind of work.

Drop one when:

• It receives a case or two a year and nobody remembers how to send them
• Its kind of work is now done just as well by another of your labs
• The team dreads its routine more than it values its results

How to choose a dental lab has 12 questions for any lab you are thinking of adding.

Make several labs feel like one

The cost of extra labs is mostly in the differences between them. Remove the differences you control.

• One standard for the Rx. Give every lab the same details, whatever its form asks for. Our dental lab prescription checklist is a base.
• One list of open cases. Every lab’s cases in the same place, with the same statuses.
• One morning check. A single look at tomorrow’s seats, covering all labs.
• One page per lab. How to send, who to call, delivery days and turnaround.
• One owner. A named person who watches the whole list.

With these in place, a third lab adds a row to the list instead of a routine to remember.

How to track dental lab cases in your practice covers the list itself.

Work you make in-house

A mill or a printer in the practice is an in-house dental lab, and in effect one more lab. It has its own queue and its own way of being forgotten.

Put in-house cases on the same list as the rest. A night guard that nobody printed is as late as one that never came back.

In-house dental lab vs outsourcing covers when making it yourself pays off.

Review the mix once a year

Practices change. A new scanner, a new dentist or a new service can make last year’s split a poor fit.

Once a year, fill in the table again. Ask each lab how the year went from its side.

Keep what works. In many years the answer is to change nothing, and that is a good result.

One place for every lab

The hardest part of using several labs is seeing all their cases at once. That is case tracking, and it is where time goes.

Tusko shows a practice every lab it uses in one place. The Rx, the status and the messages for each case are in the same view.

See how it looks for practices.