In a 6-op general practice running 28 patients a day, which common item ends up costing the most per patient when you track it — gloves, barriers, or sterilization pouches — and what’s your ballpark cost? My spreadsheet shows pouches edging out at about $0.38 per patient last month, which surprised me.
In our 6-op, pouches usually win too at ~$0.34–0.45 per patient because we need one for the cassette and a second for handpieces/burs; gloves land around $0.25–0.35 and barriers only spike on heavy turnover days. Are you counting separate handpiece pouches in that “pouches edging out at about $0.38”? If you can consolidate to one large pouch per setup or move the small stuff into a cassette, pouch spend drops fast — like swapping two snacks for one sandwich.
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And same here — “pouches edging out at about $0.38” checks out and it drives me nuts. We cut it by switching the handpieces/burs to 3" roll tubing with a heat sealer and keeping one 9x12 pouch for the cassette; that dropped our per‑patient packaging to around $0.24–0.26 last month in a 6‑op running about 28/day. Have you tried roll tubing or are you locked into self‑seal?
We were close to your “$0.38”, and the best fix for us was ditching Sharpie/ballpoint on pouches — using a small labeler (steam indicator/date) stopped seal punctures and re-bagging… If you rarely toss pouches it won’t move the needle, but for us it trimmed spend without changing sizes or counts. Are you seeing many re-made pouches across “28 patients a day”?
Quick tip, @OP: we cut pouch costs by standardizing to two sizes and pulling the others — staff were grabbing “oversized pouches” for everything, so color-coding the drawers nudged them to the smaller one for mirrors/explorer and saved a few cents each time. Only caveat: give it a week of retraining so no one tries to cram a bulky cassette into the small sleeve.
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