Setting Dental Fees Against Your Own Costs

Fee increases were widespread in 2025. Reporting from the American Dental Association's Health Policy Institute indicated that roughly two thirds of dentists raised fees during the year, by something close to 6.7 percent on average, largely to keep pace with rising costs rather than to expand margin. A raise keeps the practice level with its costs only if it is aimed where the costs actually moved.

A flat raise without a cost view is a guess

The simplest move is to lift every fee by the same percentage. It is easy, and it is blunt. Costs did not rise evenly across procedures: supply and lab pressure landed harder on some codes than others, and chair time is priced differently by procedure. A uniform increase leaves some fees still short of their cost and pushes others past what they needed.

Start from loaded cost, not the average

A cost-first review begins with the loaded cost of each procedure, the chair time, supplies, lab, and a share of overhead, and compares the current fee to it. The regional average has a place, but it is a price comparison, not a cost test: it tells you how your fee sits against other practices, not whether it covers your cost. This is a self-assessment of your own numbers, not a comparison to other practices and not a fee schedule.

Adjust where the gap is

Once you can see margin per procedure, the adjustment follows the evidence. Raise or rework the fees where the margin is thin or negative, leave the healthy ones alone, and decide knowingly about any procedure you choose to keep as a loss leader. That is a targeted change rather than an across-the-board guess.

The judgment stays yours

None of this sets a fee for you. What margin a practice needs, and what it chooses to charge, is the owner's decision. DentistOpFlow raises advisory flags from your own costs and never changes a fee, because the number that matters is yours to set.