hey it's Dr Amanda with Street smile Solutions Street smilesolutions.com and we're going to
answer this question today what should you charge for that phase one intercept
of expansion Orthodontics case and I had a doctor asked me that yesterday and I couldn't believe I
actually did not have a video on that I think I've never wanted to be the one to tell you
what to charge because that's ultimately up to you but um I can tell you what's kind of usual
and customary and what I see but first of all we need to address a few things right off the
top first of all a lot of that's going to depend on if this is Insurance case or not and if it's
an insurance case if you are a network or not hopefully you're not if you're a pedo or a GP
um and also hopefully it's not an insurance case because that can get a lot more complicated I do
have a great webinar that's archived whether you go to gpwebner.com where I archive my webinars you
go to my link tree which is usually on my bio or you can search for it within YouTube just
go to the search feature at the top of my page straight smile Solutions all the way to the right
where they have that mag Define glass and put in the keywords orthodontic insurance and there
is a great webinar that I did with bonsie popat who has her MBA and she also runs an orthopedic
practice in Phoenix a lot of the questions were answered there she also does have Consulting if
you go to my website straight smile Solutions you go to classes down at the bottom of those tabs you
will see Consulting with bonsee about insurance and billing and things like that her fees are
quite affordable in my opinion and she does offer a complimentary 15-minute consult with any of my
referrals from my website so you should definitely use her as a resource so we won't be talking about
we're going to talk and assume that you can pick your price and it's non-insurance that's
the way I'm going to be speaking so first of all anytime you are coming up with a price for phase
one interceptive you got to think about what you're doing so the treatment plan comes first
then the price I don't know that many people that have a set price because phase one can be super
easy breezy fast like four brackets and done in three months it could be super easy breezy fast
like eight aligners and done in 3 three months or it could be 18 months and it could involve
a multitude of different appliances you know headgears face masks distalizers Invisalign first
I mean so your lab fee could be nothing your lab fee could be 200 your lab fee could be eighteen
hundred dollars so a lot of it's going to depend on the complexity how long it's going to take and
the lab fee but I would say for me somewhere in between two thousand dollars and four thousand
dollars would be the range the 2000 would be for something that's just like a habit Appliance and
maybe a few brackets or maybe a few express or Flex in-house aligners to close up a little Gap
um maybe it's just uh expanders only maybe we don't need any type of alignment afterwards
there's no impact in canines it's just to make the Arches a little wider the teeth aren't crooked
um okay then that would be two thousand and as we start building on more indirect bonding or
aligners onto the appliances or if we go into Invisalign first with ma afterwards it's going
to be definitely closer to four thousand dollars remember if you are using Insurance you need to
make sure your patient is aware that usually insurance only pays once so if they use their
insurance and exhaust it for this phase one they're not going to have it later for phase
two and the vast majority of patients who do phase one need phase two remember also
one plus two doesn't equal comprehensive so I mean it does and it doesn't it shouldn't be
shouldn't be that much more expensive your comprehensive case price let's say it's fifty
five hundred to six thousand your phase one might be three thousand your phase two might
be four thousand so it's going to be a little bit more than doing it all at comprehensive but
we're also doing it twice and we're getting the hard stuff out of the way when they're younger
sometimes sometimes sometimes can't promise we don't need a phase two and if you've heard
my stories before about my own kids did phase one on both my kids son ended up not needing anything
in phase two needing is in air quotes because he does have a couple teeth that are slightly
rotated it's very rare that anything's gonna turn out totally perfect but a lot of times if
you create the space the teeth start to come in nice if you fix the bite the teeth start to come
in nice you're still waiting on 16 more teeth right you're waiting on your threes fours and
fives in each quadrant as well as your sevenths so even though we created the space and fixed the
bite we can't guarantee that they're gonna come in straight you know hopefully we're looking at
the panel and making sure the eruption lanes are nice and parallel but still funny things
can happen they might come a little bit rotated but it tends to not be a more of a functional or
a health issue it tends to be more of a cosmetic issue at that point so it's often optional whether
you're going to do the phase two or not kind of depends on which tooth comes in kind of funky um
my daughter totally needed the phase two she ended up still with an impacted canine even though we
did everything we could do including expansion and two by fours and you name it space consolidation
um but that's just the luck of the draw that was just genetics it probably would have been
a lot worse had we not done phase one we probably would have had done some type of surgery so I will
take what you had over what could have been and that's pretty much it so pricing it's really up to
you I mean your first five to ten cases I really recommend that you try to charge on the Lower Side
just because you're going to be learning and maybe see if those cases you know in exchange for having
a major discount maybe they could be friends or family members or team members staff members kids
your kids if they'd be willing to let you use the photos on social media and make sure you have that
social media release if you don't have one you can contact me and I'll be glad to give you a copy
um so that way you can get started on Instagram and marketing and making content around phase
one which will be stuff that patients I'll have nice SEO tags and patients can find it as well as
you might want to make instructional videos and put on YouTube I know a lot of doctors when they
get started on phase one they'll they'll start to create FAQs for patients and they'll put it
on their website which is great also for SEO and search but it's also useful because you don't have
to answer a question eight thousand times you just say hey go to our website all the answers
you need for what you need to know is on there all right hopefully that was helpful thank you