What do other dental practices actually pay?

"Are we paying too much?" is the question every practice owner has and almost none can answer. Not because the information is secret, but because there is nowhere to look it up.

You can find out what a dental chair costs to buy. You cannot find out what the practice down the road pays for the same box of gloves, the same composite, the same clinical waste collection. Suppliers price per account, discounts are negotiated privately, and nobody publishes.

This piece is about how to work out where you stand anyway, and what to do about it.

Why comparison is hard in dentistry specifically

Three things make it harder than in most industries.

Pricing is per account, not per product. Two practices buying identical items from the same supplier routinely pay different prices, set by when the account opened, who negotiated it, and whether anyone has looked since. There is no list price that means anything.

Volume breaks are invisible. Discount tiers exist but are rarely published. You cannot tell whether you are just below a threshold that would drop your unit cost, because you do not know the threshold exists.

The corporate groups genuinely do pay less. This is the part that stings. A group buying for eighty practices negotiates centrally and gets terms an independent cannot access alone — not because they are cleverer, but because they are bigger. It is the structural disadvantage of staying independent, and it is real.

What you can compare today, without any data

Some costs are comparable right now because they are standardised or published.

Card processing. Entirely comparable, because it is a percentage of your own turnover. Work out your effective rate — every charge divided by total card turnover — and you have a number that means the same thing in any practice. Most UK practices should be between 0.6% and 1.4%. How to work it out.

Energy. Unit rates and standing charges are quotable, and comparison is straightforward if you have a recent bill.

Statutory costs. Employer NI, pension contributions, the National Living Wage — identical for everyone, so the question is not the rate but whether your staffing model absorbs them.

Professional indemnity and insurance. Quotable annually, and the renewal quote is rarely the best available.

Start with these, because they need no benchmark to act on. The bill is the evidence.

What you cannot compare yet, and why

Consumables are where the real money sits and where comparison is hardest. Gloves, composite, impression material, endo files, burs, sterilisation pouches, clinical waste — hundreds of lines, each individually small, collectively significant, and none of it published anywhere.

The only honest way to fix that is to pool actual invoices from enough practices that an aggregate becomes meaningful, and to verify them rather than take anyone's word for what they pay.

That is what SupplyIndex is building, and it is worth being straight about where it stands: the benchmark unlocks per product once enough practices have contributed, and until it does, we show nothing. A benchmark drawn from four practices is not a benchmark, it is an anecdote with a decimal point. We would rather say "not yet" than publish a number that misleads you into a decision.

What to do in the meantime

1. Build the list. Every recurring cost, annual value, renewal date, notice period. Sort by annual cost. Most owners discover they have been giving equal attention to a £280 line and a £9,000 line.

2. Work the top five. Not all of them — the top five by value. Ask each supplier directly what a better price looks like and what volume would earn it. The answer is often available simply for asking, because retention costs less than acquisition.

3. Fix the renewal dates. Calendar reminders eight weeks before each one. The renewal is the only moment you have leverage and it passes silently. Most overpaying practices are overpaying because a date went by, not because anyone negotiated badly.

4. Consolidate where it earns something. Splitting orders across four suppliers to save pennies per line often costs more in lost volume breaks and delivery charges than it saves.

5. Contribute your invoices somewhere that aggregates them. Ours or anyone's. The reason nobody knows what practices pay is that nobody pools the data, and that only changes when practices do.

The honest summary

You cannot currently look up what other dental practices pay for consumables, because that information does not exist in public. Anyone claiming otherwise is quoting list prices or guessing.

What you can do is measure the costs that are already comparable, work the largest lines, and stop letting renewals pass unexamined. That is most of the available saving, and none of it needs a benchmark.

If you want the card-fee part done for you, send a recent statement and I will tell you your effective rate and where it sits.