A new era in implant dentistry
Mark McOmie, DMD
The year was 2001. I had been out of dental school for three years and was very happy with our practice. My wife and I had met in dental school and married when we graduated. Shortly thereafter, we did the unthinkable. We started a dental practice from scratch. Many told us not to, and although we were nervous, we did it. Things were going great. Our practice was growing rapidly, and we were profitable.
We decided we would like to get into dental implants—not just restoring implants that specialists had placed for us, but doing the placement surgery as well. We researched courses and finally decided to take a course in Provo, Utah, from Dr. Gordon Christensen. We went to two hands-on courses, trying a half dozen or more implant systems in the process. We came home feeling confident about doing simple posterior implant surgery. We both liked the same dental implant system. We made a large investment with the company and started placing implants. It was exciting and fun.
The implants we were buying cost about $600 for the implant itself, $300 for stock abutments, and $50 for a healing abutment. We were trying to deliver a service at a price people in our community could afford. Just the parts on an implant were running close to $1,000, sometimes more. Our implant representative came in one day and told us the company was increasing our fee for an implant by $50 and removing the cover screw from the implant package. The cover screw would cost an additional $50 instead of being included in the package. This would increase our cost per implant by $100. Our rep then told us about the lavish annual session in Las Vegas, where the company had the penthouse suite at the Bellagio and held parties where Cirque du Soleil performed in the suite for them.
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