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A free lab rework costs the practice 645–1125 PLN per case. We break down the hidden costs: clinician's time, schedule, assistant.
The lab returns the work. The invoice remains unchanged — 0 PLN. But the costs in the practice? Measured in hundreds of PLN, but annually they add up to thousands.
This is not a metaphor or a rough estimate. These are concrete numbers that can be measured and planned.
Lab rework = redoing work without additional charge to the patient. For the clinician and assistant, however, it's a full sequence of actions. Each has an operating cost.
Assume your chairside minute rate is 10 PLN (realistic for most prosthetic practices in Poland).
Clinician's time: Rework usually takes 20–30 minutes (assessment, adjustments, new temporary cement, sometimes reappointment). Average 25 minutes. Cost: 25 min × 10 PLN/min = 250 PLN.
Assistant's time: Material preparation, assist, cleaning. 5 minutes × 10 PLN/min = 50 PLN. (Assistant's time included in the chairside minute rate).
Lost chair capacity: A slot in the schedule is potential revenue. An average prosthetic procedure (crown prep, try-in, modifications) is 45–60 minutes and generates ~300–500 PLN in revenue. If the slot could be filled with something else, the lost cost = 300–450 PLN.
Material costs: Cement, grinding, polishing, cleaning materials. Indirect costs: 15–25 PLN.
Additional patient visit: If the rework requires a second patient recall (e.g., a few days later for a second assessment or confirmation), that's another 200–300 PLN in lost revenue (optional, but common).
Total per case: 645–1125 PLN.
The first crown requires ~30 minutes of chairside work. Rework requires a similar amount of time, but without revenue. Economically, it's cheaper than doing the work from scratch — but we're not focusing on that. The key is the cost incurred by the practice.
A lab following industry standards: 10–15% of cases require rework. A poor-quality lab: 25–35%.
Conservatively assume 3 reworks per month (for a practice with 60–80 prosthetic cases per month).
3 cases × 645–1125 PLN = 1935–3375 PLN/month.
Annually: 23,220–40,500 PLN — this is a cost that appears neither in revenue nor in material expenses. It appears as time wastage and schedule chaos.
For practices with more cases or better lab collaboration (2 reworks/month = 15,480–27,000 PLN/year) and for practices with poorer collaboration (5 reworks/month = 38,700–67,500 PLN/year).
Reworks happen. But they are not random. They are usually the result of one of three scenarios:
Intraoral scan taken without a retraction cord, at the wrong angle, without interocclusal registration. The lab works on incorrect data, the result doesn’t fit. Communication: assistant sends "please a crown for tooth 1.1" without additional information. The lab guesses the remaining parameters (angle, height, emergence profile, shade).
Solution: a digital scanning protocol. 5 specific pieces of information instead of verbal descriptions.
"Please a nice crown" is not an instruction. The lab doesn't know if it's a single unit in the aesthetic zone, a bridge abutment, or an implant restoration. It doesn't know if the patient prefers a brighter or more intense shade. It doesn't know the patient's posture or their main concerns.
Lack of context = 50% chance of success. The other half involves returning to the lab, discussions, modifications, resending.
Solution: a standard instruction form for each order — 5–7 questions, filled out by the clinician before sending the work to the lab.
The patient sees the effect of the work for the first time only in the practice. If the result doesn't satisfy them, the work must be redone. Let's say the crown height doesn't require immediate modification, the patient waits, the crown goes back to the lab for a change. Additional weeks and costs.
Solution: a diagnostic mock-up (wax-up or 3D print) shown to the patient BEFORE the final restoration is produced. Patient approval eliminates 90% of aesthetic and dimensional problems.
What does a systemic solution look like? The Perfect Fit Protocol (PFP) — used by deltalabs., among others — is based on four steps:
1. Digital documentation before work. Situational scan with parameters, photos in different positions, information about material, color, patient expectations.
2. Concept verification by the lab. Before starting work, the lab sends a digital mock-up (virtual model) for clinician approval.
3. Approval before production. The clinician and patient see the result BEFORE tooth preparation, before the restoration is milled/printed. Reworks are cheap digital modifications, not physical rework in the lab.
4. Quality control before shipping. Each job is verified against the approved digital model.
Result: the first restoration fits at the first try-in. Reworks drop below 3% and are usually final adjustments, not reworks due to incorrect dimensions.
In practices that have implemented such a protocol, the hidden costs of reworks decrease by 23–40 thousand PLN annually.
LABORATORY PERSPECTIVE
One rework costs 645–1125 PLN in hidden costs. With 3 cases per month — nearly 30,000 PLN annually, which is not visible in any statement.
20 minutes of crown adjustment chairside means 213 PLN in losses — chairtime and assistant's time. With 2 crowns per week, that's over 20,000 PLN annually.
If the first try-in is a test, not confirmation, each pair of appointments costs ~130 PLN. With 20 pairs annually, that's 3000–4000 PLN.
The average practice loses 47,000–65,000 PLN annually due to remakes, delays, communication issues, and lack of planning. We break down 5 categories of losses.
Get in touch — we'll discuss your case and find the optimal solution.
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