Add up the chair time in a full-mouth plan: you will rarely pass ten hours. Yet the treatment spans a year. Everything else is delay.
Three families of delay
- 1.Biological delays: healing, osseointegration, provisionalization. Imposed and not negotiable.
- 2.Technical delays: laboratory turnaround between an impression and a try-in. Known, and compressible only at the margin.
- 3.Scheduling delays: the patient comes back three weeks later because that was the next open slot. These are the only ones you truly control.
A long plan is not necessarily a bad plan. But a plan whose length comes mostly from the third family is a plan you can shorten without changing anything clinical.
The invisible cost of a scheduling delay
Every added week raises the risk of the patient dropping out mid-treatment, stretches the time to payment, and occupies a slot you could have given to someone else. None of that shows on the quote.
When comparing two sequences, read the total duration as closely as the total amount. Two plans with identical fees per hour are not equivalent if one finishes in four months and the other in eleven.
Give the reason, not just the date
A patient told "see you on the 14th" remembers a date. A patient told "the bone needs three months to integrate the implant, we will see each other after that" remembers a reason. The second cancels far less often.