Dental Office Loans in Goshen, IN: Intraoral Scanners, a Milling Unit and Lab Bills

The 2023 County Business Patterns put the number of dental offices with paid staff in Elkhart County, IN at 58. Their combined staff was 609 people, on $36.6 million of yearly payroll. Only 7 of the 58 had fewer than five employees, or 12.1%, so offices with five or more employees make up the great majority of the count.

That staffing shapes what a dental office borrows for. Chairs, scanners and imaging carry long useful lives and match equipment financing, while payroll and lab bills come around every month and match a credit line.

The office ZIP is a separate count: ZIP 46526, which carries the Goshen, IN name, held 16 offices of dentists with paid employees in 2023 (ZIP Code Business Patterns). Dentists practicing without paid staff are counted by Nonemployer Statistics, which listed 13 such offices in Elkhart County, IN for 2024.

An intraoral scanner replaces trays of impression material with a digital file sent straight to the lab. In this invented case a Goshen, IN general dentist prices a scanner with its cart and laptop at $31,200.

Put on equipment financing for four years at 10.6% a year, the invented $31,200 scanner carries a monthly payment of $800.33; by the last of the 48 payments the office has paid $38,415.84, $7,215.84 more than the price. Before the call, the office can gather:

• The dealer’s quote, with the model and what the price includes
• The scanner software’s yearly or monthly subscription, listed apart from the hardware
• Business bank statements covering recent months, plus the latest business tax return
• The practice’s years in operation and its latest year-end figures

The subscription matters because it keeps running after the loan ends and is not part of the equipment. A partner may finance the hardware alone and leave the software fee to the practice’s monthly budget.

Large restorative cases create lab bills that arrive before the patient has paid. In this invented case an Elkhart County, IN dental office receives an $8,700 lab invoice for a full-arch case, and the patient is on an in-house plan of $2,175 every 30 days for four payments.

Drawn on a line of credit at 12.85% a year and paid down by each installment, the balance falls every 30 days:

Interest on the invented draw comes to $229.71 in all. A 12-month term loan for the same invented $8,700 at 12.85% would run $776.45 a month and $617.40 of interest, because it keeps charging long after the patient has paid the office back.

A milling unit lets the office make single crowns in one visit instead of sending each case out. In this invented case the unit and its furnace cost $64,500, financed over 72 months at 9.95% a year, which sets the payment at $1,193.29 a month and the total at $85,916.88.

The invented office pays an outside lab $185 per crown and would spend $38 on a milling block and materials for each crown made in house, a difference of $147 per crown. The invented payment of $1,193.29 is covered once the office makes 9 crowns a month in house (8.1 rounded up). Below that volume the mill costs the office more than the lab; above it, the difference stays with the practice.

That crown count is the figure to test against the office’s own records before signing. Staff time for design and milling is left out of this invented case and would raise the count.

Smaller, irregular costs suit a credit line well. In this invented case an Elkhart County, IN dental office draws for two of them at 13.05% a year:

• A $5,400 order of composites, impression material and gloves, out for 30 days: $57.92 of simple interest
• A $3,850 repair to the office’s autoclave, out for 45 days: $61.94 of simple interest

Both draws in this invented case are paid down from patient receipts within weeks, which keeps the interest small. A sterilizer repair cannot wait for the next budget, and a draw lets the office keep seeing patients while the repair is paid over a few weeks. Physician offices have their own page among the industries.