Guide · Canada
Provincial dental fee guides in Canada, and the number they leave out
If you run a practice in Canada, you almost certainly price against your provincial dental association's suggested fee guide. It is a helpful reference point for what colleagues in Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, or your own province typically charge. What it cannot tell you is whether any of those fees actually earns a margin once your costs are counted. This guide explains what a provincial fee guide is, the number it leaves out, and how to fill that gap with your own figures.
What a provincial fee guide is
Most provincial and territorial dental associations in Canada publish a suggested fee guide each year, built around a common set of procedure codes. Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, and the other provinces each issue their own, so there is no single national fee table. The guide reflects typical fees in that province; it is a pricing reference, not a statement of cost or profitability.
That reference is genuinely useful for staying in line with your market. But pricing to the provincial average only tells you what others charge. It says nothing about what the procedure costs you to deliver, which is the half of the equation that decides whether the fee is worth doing.
A suggested fee is not a margin
Margin is the fee minus your estimated cost: chair time, materials, lab, and a fair share of overhead. The fee guide gives you the first half of that and none of the second. Two procedures listed at the same suggested fee can have completely different economics once chair time and lab work are counted, and the guide shows them as twins.
The same fee can also behave differently from one practice to another. A crown priced to the provincial guide might earn a healthy margin in a lower-cost market and barely break even for a practice paying Greater Toronto Area or Vancouver rents and wages. The suggested fee is identical; the margin is not.
How to check your own numbers
To know whether a fee works, you have to put your own costs against it. DentistOpFlow does this from data you already have: it reads your supplier invoices and your schedule and produces a per-procedure estimate of cost and margin, then flags the fees sitting below target. It does not republish or include any provincial fee guide, and it has no access to any regional charge or fee table; the comparison that matters is your fee against your cost.
Your practice data stays in your own storage and no patient information is involved. We only ever hold your account email and practice name, and only after you confirm. The result is a clear view of which of your fees, priced to the guide or not, are actually earning their keep.
Start with one fee
The Practice Cost Evaluator gives you a free, no-login estimate of a single procedure's cost and margin, so you can see how a fee priced to the provincial guide looks once your costs are in. When you are ready for the full schedule, DentistOpFlow runs it across every procedure and tracks it over time.
The figures we pre-fill are general reference estimates for directional guidance only, not a fee schedule or recommended fees. Your own numbers are always more accurate, so use them.
Common questions
- Is there a national dental fee guide in Canada?
- No. Most provincial and territorial dental associations publish their own suggested fee guide each year, built on a common set of procedure codes, so fees are referenced province by province rather than from a single national table.
- Does DentistOpFlow include my provincial fee guide?
- No. DentistOpFlow does not republish or include any provincial fee guide and has no access to any regional fee table. It calculates your own per-procedure cost and margin from the costs you already pay, so you can see whether each fee earns a margin.
- Which provinces does this apply to?
- The same logic applies across Canada, including Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada, because every provincial fee guide sets a suggested price without telling you the cost to deliver the procedure at your practice.
See it on one of your own fees
The Practice Cost Evaluator gives you a free, no-login estimate of a procedure's cost and margin.
Keep reading
Dental practice overhead in Canada: what the average hides