Labor is the largest single expense in the practice’s annual operating budget;  usually, it consumes approximately 25% of the practice’s annual budget. And the sterilization area is the most labor-intensive area of the office as the average dental assistant enters this area over 80 times each day!

Many (total) dental assistant hours are spent each day processing instrumentation in sterilization and this represents a significant expense.

If you want to save money and increase profitability, focus on decreasing labor costs.

Labor is decreased when low or high technology is used to save labor.

The average practice’s capital equipment depreciation expense represents approximately 5% of the practice’s annual budget, so it makes sense to use technology to decrease the much larger labor expense representing 25% of the annual budget.

In other words, if I am attempting to contain costs, does it make sense to focus on decreasing the expense consuming 5% of the budget or the expense consuming 25% of the budget?

Unfortunately, many practices focus on reducing the 5% number.

Attempting to save money, many practices avoid sterilization equipment purchases, which will pay for themselves within a year in labor savings, with the mistaken idea that funds are being saved. The money is spent on labor instead of equipment, month after month, year after year.