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Mohammad Khair
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Mohamed, I love your thought process. However, Cerec is showing up in many average Dental practices. I would guess the average dentist works four day week and does one unit a day possibly a little more. So, let's say the production is more like 20 units a month less the four weeks vacation or 220 a yr. Cerec cost about $125 K and the doc needs significent continuing Ed to get it right, $25K more in Arazona. Now let's look at what the real ROI would look like.
Cost of system. $125k
Education $25k
Create inventory of blocks, coolant and tools $10K
Total up front investmet $160K
Over five years this will cost about $2800 a month.
Now let's look at the cost per unit.
Block $32
Tools $4
Labor $0 (let's say the labor is similar to making the temp even though it's likely more).
Net materials and labor $36.
Your average doc that does 20 units a month times 11 months will be paying $162 a unit for the lease plus $36 for material.
BOTTOM LINE $198 ($0 labor) a unit plus the headaches of inventory, cost of obsolete inventory, education, maintaince and the need to keep producing to pay for the mill. In addition, Sirona is constantly developing new better?? Scanners and mills resulting in continued reinvestment of revinue into the system.
Obviously the more work put through the mill the lower the unit cost. In addition, Cerec grinds on glass and many ceramic units have chipped margins coming out of the mill. Most docs don't glaze the work, just mill and posilish. Are they really providing a lab like restoration? Do they need to? On the other hand, I do get the benifit of a crown in one appointment. I know I am constantly busy and if I needed a crown I would love to take care of it in one apt. That said, we, as lab people need to offer a crown in a day.
I have attempted to be as non bias as possible here. If there is a cerec doc out there and you figure it differently please pipe in.
Fair enough, we both actually have different point of view, but i think the two views are very close too.
The doc are charging more to deliver the crown in the very same appointment and that will reduce the time to cover the system price, otherwise the doc is wasting his/her time to do the lab job for no real return, and that's simply why the system is only good for urgent cases who are willing to bay real more.
You would really be surprised if you see those unglazed feldspar or glass restorations in the patient mouth after only a few month, they will look like nearly vmk68 opaque mixed with porcelain and fired without metal, even glazing them the color and translucency wont survive for more than few years, less than 5 years in most cases, however the new generation of the materials may be a little improved, a huge different in quality between the lab made restorations and those made of feldspar or glass.