Having to remake dentistry is a fact of life. The more important question is what is the percentage of time you have remakes? First let’s start by defining what I mean by a remake. These are restorations that have to be altered or re-made prior to being permanently seated. This is a different conversation then having to replace restorations after they have spent time in the mouth.
My remakes occur for reasons like marginal discrepancy, inability to seat the restoration, open contacts, excessive occlusal adjustment and poor color match. I began wondering about this when I heard a recent statistic that the average dentist who works with Glidewell has a 6% remake rate. I am not certain if this number would be consistent across all labs. The first thing I realized is I don’t know what my remake percentage is, and it struck me this would be important information. I typically pay attention to remakes when it becomes a “recurrent” problem, but this is an intuitive guess not based on monitoring.
All remakes cost us time, money and good will. Therefore knowing when they happen is important in running a successful practice. The purpose of knowing the “score” if we can call it that in the remake game is that it allows me to address the “why” behind it in an attempt to improve the results. We have now begun tracking remakes and instituted a policy whereby I evaluate the case when this happens, communicate with the lab, and if we identify a place to improve our process bring this back to the team for implementation. Having a team member responsible for laboratory interaction makes this and tracking cases going out and coming in predictable.
CEREC has dramatically reduced my remake rate.
I could not agree more. In my hands there are lots of contributing factors like I get to see my preps int he virtual impression and catch the things that need adjustment. Doing the design and mill has made me a better technician on my end. Lastly, of course if there is a problem the patient is still in the office, numb and we can adapt easily.
Hey Lee,
We do monitor both internal and external remakes. Internal is a bit higher as our goal is to catch any troubles before they leave the lab. Our external number is just under 3%.
Phil,
Thanks for the data and keeping those remakes “in house”. Do you have a process for working with your dentists to reduce their percentage over time?
Lee
Hey Phillip–I feel good– intuitively we had less than 3% remakes. I never counted but your lab does a great job—that helps keep the remakes down.
6% sounds pretty high Lee—could be lots of reasons for that number…much more than meets the eye.
Barry Polansky TAOofDentistry.com
Hi ,
I am running a lab with annual capacity of 16000-18000 unites of crown & bridge ,we are keeping the remake ratio on the limit of
2-3% ,do you believe it’s still within acceptable average of remake ratio ,and do you know the remake ratio as per international standards .
Many Thanks
Sami Issa Kahlout
Manager of AHS Dental Lab
I am not familiar with the remake percentages on a global basis, the national average I think is around 4-5% here in the US and good labs aim for 2-3%.