How to Determine the True Production Potential of Your Dental Practice (Part 2: Capacity, Chairs & Fees)
- Russ Ledbetter
- 6 days ago
- 5 min read
In Part 1 of this series, we discussed foundational indicators that reveal whether your practice is operating below its true capacity.
In this post, we will continue that discussion by examining two of the most significant — and often overlooked — constraints on production: physical capacity and fee positioning.
These two factors alone can determine whether your practice has room to grow or is already operating at its structural ceiling.
The Major Factors That Determine Practice Potential
When I evaluate a dental practice’s potential, I look at several key variables:
Active patients
New patient flow
Number of operatories (chairs)
Fees
Insurance participation (fee-for-service vs. PPO-heavy practices)
Doctor’s hand speed
How far the schedule is booked out
Daily average production variance and deviation from the mean
Not all of these carry equal weight. Some are systems issues — like broken appointments or hygiene recall (which we discussed in other posts). Others are structural realities.
In this post, we will focus on the structural realities.
Operatories: The Hard Ceiling on Production
The number of operatories — both doctor and hygiene — goes a long way toward determining how productive your practice can be.
If you only have three chairs available, you are highly restricted in how much you can produce. I cannot tell you how many dentists I have worked with who built offices or bought practices and reached the production limits of their facilities far sooner than they ever imagined.
A new graduate may not be able to imagine needing more than three chairs any time soon. However, most reach that point much faster than expected.
The Optimal Chair Count for a Single Dentist
For most single-doctor practices, the optimal configuration is five chairs:
Two productive doctor chairs
Two hygiene chairs
One overflow chair
The overflow chair may seem unproductive. It is not.
Without it, all the unproductive procedures — adjustments, emergencies, checks, quick exams — end up occupying one of your productive chairs. That slows production and increases stress.
There are exceptions. I worked with a dentist in Texarkana, Texas who had seven chairs:
Three productive doctor chairs
Three full-time hygienists
One overflow chair
He wasn’t happy unless he was flying around the office with his hair on fire. That pace is not desirable for most of my clients.
For low-stress, high-production dentistry (single dentist), five chairs is very difficult to outgrow.
Chair Requirements for Two-Doctor Practices
For two doctors, ten chairs would be ideal — simply doubling the five-chair model — but that is unrealistic in most cases.
In practice:
Nine chairs works very well.
Eight chairs is about as low as you want to go.
An eight-chair setup typically includes:
Two productive chairs per doctor
One overflow chair
Three hygiene chairs
Anything less than that begins to restrict productivity.
Hygiene Columns Per Doctor
As a rule:
1.5 hygiene columns per doctor is the minimum for a maximized practice.
2 hygiene columns per doctor is preferred.
If you have a very strong new patient flow — roughly 50–70 new patients per month — 1.5 columns per doctor may work.
If new patient flow is lower, more hygiene capacity is required.
(If you have not evaluated your hygiene systems, you may also want to review our post on Hygiene Recall & Dental Practice Growth.)
All of this assumes a Monday–Thursday practice schedule. If doctors stagger their schedules, productivity can sometimes be maximized in fewer chairs.
Fees: How Pricing Impacts Production
Fees play a major role in production potential.
I still have clients in rural areas whose all-porcelain crowns are under $1,000 full fee-for-service. If they participate in PPO plans, allowed fees can drop to $650–$750.
On the other end of the spectrum, I have urban dentists charging $2,500 per unit for crowns and bridges.
That difference alone dramatically affects production capacity.
Fee Analysis: Know Where You Stand
Typically, Patterson Dental Supply and Henry Schein offer free fee analyses to their dentist clients. There are also third-party fee analyses available, though some can run into the thousands of dollars.
I have found that Udell Webb’s fee analyzer is a solid, affordable option (at $350 in 2026). It gives you a clear picture of where your fees stand in your specific market without overcomplicating the process.
Regardless of which route you choose, you need to know where your fees stand.
Even if you participate heavily in insurance plans, your full fees should remain above market.
I still see dentists whose fees are lower than insurance allowances. That should never happen.
Keeping fees current allows you to:
Track how much you are writing off
Maintain leverage with insurance companies
Accurately measure true production potential
Where Fees Should Be Set
As a general rule, fees should be set at 60–70% of your zip code’s market fees.
You do not want to go under 50%.
At that point, you risk developing the reputation of being the “Walmart discount office” of dentistry. If that is your strategy, no judgment — but most dentists I work with do not want that perception.
Perception Drives Patient Decisions
Perception is stronger than reality.
Patients cannot reliably distinguish between a mediocre crown and a truly exceptional one. They can see obvious technical flaws — bad margins, poor color matches — but they cannot differentiate your crown from 90% of your peers’ work.
Price sets perception.
Perception drives decisions.
A True Story About Price and Perception
I will share an odd story. This only happened once in 36 years of consulting in dentistry.
We had a rural dentist who did not like doing crowns. It may have been a confidence issue at the time. He was adamant — he wanted to do fewer crowns.
We suggested that he might double his crown fee, so patients would seek less expensive offices. (As a consultant, this was hard for me to suggest, and I tried to change his attitude toward crowns instead.) He was adamant and doubled his fees.
An odd thing happened.
Over a short period of time, his crown and bridge production doubled.
Apparently, he developed the reputation of having the highest quality crowns simply because they were the highest priced. Patients assumed price equaled quality.
I do not recommend this strategy. This was a solitary situation that has never repeated itself in my experience. The point is not to double your fees — the point is to understand how strongly perception drives behavior.
The story had a happy ending. The dentist gained confidence and eventually learned to enjoy doing crowns.
Another Example: Denture Case Mix
Some of my clients offer four categories of dentures:
Economy
Basic
Premium
Elite
Most patients choose Premium. Some choose Elite. Almost none choose Economy or Basic.
The naming and pricing structure influence perception, and perception influences decisions.
What’s Next in This Series
In Part 1 of this series, we covered foundational indicators of potential.
In Part 3, we will examine how far your schedule is booked out — and why that metric can reveal untapped capacity.
We will also examine daily average production variance and what it tells us about consistency and growth.
If you would like a free analysis of your practice’s potential, call Russ at (770) 974-0465 or submit this form to receive a Free Analysis from Russ.
About the Author
Russ Ledbetter is a dental practice management consultant with Dental Consulting Experts, The Ledbetter Group. For over 35 years, he has helped dentists increase production, reduce stress, and improve team performance—without changing diagnosis or compromising clinical standards.
Curious how much untapped production potential exists in your practice?
