One of the things that surprises practices most when they move to a digital workflow with Cadcan: design revisions are free. If a case comes back from the patient with an issue, something doesn't sit right, a tooth needs adjusting, we modify the design and send it back at no charge.
This tends to land differently than people expect. Not because free revisions are unheard of, but because the instinct in most lab relationships is to treat a revision as a cost item. A concession. Something to negotiate around.
We don't think about it that way, and it is worth explaining why.
What the Traditional Model Gets Wrong
In a conventional lab relationship, revisions come with fees, turnaround times, and a certain amount of friction on both sides. That friction is not accidental. It is built into the economics.
When a lab charges for revisions, the incentive for everyone involved is to ship the file and move on. That is understandable. But it also means that when something genuinely needs adjusting, the cost and the delay fall on the practice, or on the patient. The outcome that matters, whether the restoration actually works well, becomes secondary to the transaction.
"When revisions carry a cost, the incentive is to stop asking. That is not good for anyone."
The result is a quiet pressure to accept cases that are close enough. Not wrong exactly, but not quite right either. Practices absorb that friction because calling it back feels like starting an argument.
Our Approach
We want the case to be right. If it isn't, we fix it.
Concretely: design adjustments on any file we have produced are free within six months of delivery, as long as new records don't need to be submitted. If the original scan data is still valid and the adjustment is to the design itself, that is on us. We make the change, we send it back, no invoice generated.
The six-month window reflects the realistic lifecycle of a case. Adjustments that surface well after that window usually point to something that has changed in the patient's situation rather than an issue with the original design. At that point the starting point for the work has changed too, which means it is genuinely a new case rather than a revision of the old one.
"A design revision and a new case are not the same thing. Knowing the difference matters."
The distinction is worth being clear about. If the records we designed from are still accurate, adjustments are free. If those records are no longer current, we need current records to design from. That is not a policy carve-out; it is just what good design practice requires. You cannot produce a file that fits a patient accurately if the data the file is based on no longer reflects that patient's anatomy.
Why This Changes the Relationship
The practical effect of free revisions is not just financial. It is relational.
Practices stop second-guessing whether something is worth flagging. If a case comes back and something feels slightly off, they send it in. That feedback loop is actually valuable to us too. It is how we learn what is working in a given practice's workflow and what isn't. The cases that come back with notes are often the most useful ones.
It also changes what "done" means. In a traditional model, "done" means the file was delivered. In ours, "done" means the case works. That is a different standard, and it requires that revisions not feel like a cost to avoid.
For a look at how this fits the broader economics of digital dentistry, The Real ROI of Going Digital covers what practices actually save once the old friction costs are out of the picture.
