In the next year, dental laboratories in the Czech Republic will be particularly worried about MDR impementation, wages and the prices at which they sell their products. Wages will also influence the cost of implementing MDR, and MDR costs will shape prices significantly.
The end of the old year and the beginning of the new year are traditionally associated with taking stock, but also with a view of what awaits the individual and society in general in the new year. So what does 2024 hold in store for dental laboratories?
MDR
Probably the biggest challenge for dental laboratories in the coming year will be the implementation of the Medical Devices Act and the European Medical Devices Regulation (MDR), which has frighteningly invaded dental laboratories recently and dominated the public space, not only on social media. Finding a workable model that is accepted by all parties seems difficult, if not impossible, at the moment. Whether by those who manufacture dentures or those who currently supervise production.
The dental laboratories can take comfort at the moment that some of the considerable current impasse is due to the new position in which both entities find themselves. Dental laboratories often do not understand what quality management is all about, and the SAKL often does not understand the pitfalls of individually manufactured medical devices and treats these manufacturers as a classic ‘factory’ that churns out thousands of products straight to the consumer ‘without unpacking’ according to the same specifications.
It seems that an acceptable solution will be, as it usually is, a compromise where the SCA will partly retreat from the harshest interpretation and dental laboratories will have to learn to keep at least stock records in return. And perhaps ideally using an automated solution and laboratory software.
What is clear is that this will not be without an increase in cost, whether for the licensing of the laboratory information system or just the simple human labor that will be required in receiving, labeling and storing the material after purchase by the dental laboratory.
Payroll
At the same time, human labor costs continue to rise and will play an increasingly significant role in the economics of dental laboratory operations in the coming year.
In the last year alone, dental technician wages have risen significantly, averaging a 13% increase. (We wrote here.) And the average dental technician wage is nearly 40,000 crowns. This increase is unlikely to slow down significantly as numerically strong years retire and will continue to retire. The demand for employees will also grow due to MDR. Their supply will remain the same. Those who had a problem finding dental technician employees last year will have an even more intense problem in 2024. And they will have to find a solution to run their business in a time of more expensive human labour.
Wages in dental laboratories increased significantly year-on-year. Year-on-year wages of dental technicians in the Czech Republic increased by 13% in the first half of 2023. In the first half of 2023, the average monthly wage of a dental technician was USD 1,740 (CZK 38,957). Read more here.
In addition, it is still the case that most dental technicians who leave dental school do not go to dental laboratories, but find work outside the field and the reason for this is the starting salaries in dental laboratories and their working hours.
Prices
Dental lab operators will need to find a way to reflect rising costs in their prices and pass them on to dental practices. They could be said to have enough cushion to partially accept these price increases, with dental office prices rising by almost a fifth in 2022 alone and rising by more than a tenth in 2023. (We wrote here.) And oftentimes these increases have been driven more by naturalistic, inflationary newspaper clippings than by simply reflecting rising costs in office prices. Incidentally, in areas where there are enough providers operating in competitive dentistry, these increases have been minimal.
Although the issue of low prices is not new, and is an annual feature of complaints about low laboratory prices, the objective reasons in the form of necessary wage increases and the cost of implementing the new obligations under the MDR and the Medical Devices Act will make this discussion more urgent and necessarily more serious in the foreseeable future.
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