Profit Margins Vary Wildly by Specialty. You Might Be Wrong About Yours

Profit Margins Vary Wildly by Specialty. You Might Be Wrong About Yours

General practice averages 30% net margin. Ortho averages 42%. Perio averages 34%. Are you measuring against the right benchmark?

Most solo practitioners guess their margins. They don't segment by treatment type. Invisalign feels profitable because the material cost is low, but your chair time is long. Cleanings feel like volume, but they're 12% margin. Implants feel clinical, but they're 38% margin if you're factoring supply, lab, and surgeon fees correctly.

The dangerous assumption? That your overall practice margin tells you which services are actually profitable. Spoiler: it doesn't. You could be killing money on preventive work while subsidizing failed cases.

Action: Pull your books by service code. Calculate margin per procedure type including allocated overhead, not just direct cost. You'll find surprises. Usually, implants and endo beat you. Cleanings bury you.

Sources: Dental Economics Benchmarking Project, ADA Health Policy Institute