Getting started.
Setting a practice up takes one conversation and a few practical arrangements. What takes longer, and matters more, is the calibration that follows.
Start with a conversation
Tell us about the practice: the case mix you send, the materials you favour, how many clinicians prescribe, and what has not worked well elsewhere.
That establishes considerably more than a first case does, and it lets us flag anything about your requirements worth discussing before you commit.
It is also the point to ask your own questions — who will handle your cases, what happens when something is not right, and how to reach a technician.
Practical setup
Prescription forms, either downloaded or as printed pads delivered to the practice. Plastic bags for case transport. Agreement on how cases will move and what your collection and delivery pattern looks like.
If you scan, connecting your system means cases arrive without file handling — see connecting your scanner. Fairmont is a preferred iTero laboratory and accepts every other mainstream platform.
A named contact at the practice and a number that reaches someone who can relay a clinical question. That single arrangement affects your experience more than almost anything else.
Your first cases
Send a spread rather than only easy work. Two or three routine posterior units establish baseline fit, contacts and occlusion. One case with a demanding shade requirement shows how aesthetic work is handled. And one case where you would expect a query tells you the most.
How a laboratory handles a marginal case — whether it calls, what it asks, how the conversation goes — is more informative than a dozen uneventful crowns.
Expect a calibration period, and shorten it
We do not yet know how you prepare, how tight you like contacts, how much occlusal contact you want at delivery, or how your patients expect restorations to look. The first cases involve both sides learning.
Practices that feed back explicitly on the first ten cases settle fastest. Contacts slightly tight. Occlusion arriving a little high. Anterior restorations reading high in value. Each of those is directly actionable.
Practices that adjust everything at the chair and say nothing get our best generic guess indefinitely.
Tell us what you already know about your own preferences
If you are moving from another laboratory, years of accumulated calibration exist in their understanding of your practice and do not transfer automatically.
Write it down at the outset: preferred materials by situation, contact tightness, occlusal contact at delivery, contour preferences, and anything you consistently adjust. Per clinician where the practice has several.
Handing that over on day one is worth months of trial and error.
Getting the whole practice involved
Cases are assembled, packed and dispatched by nursing and administrative staff, queries are received by whoever answers the phone, and appointments are booked by reception against dates somebody has to track.
A practice where only the dentist understands what the laboratory needs will keep sending incomplete cases, because the person completing the form is working from habit rather than understanding.
Half an hour walking the team through what each field is for, why the shade guide name matters, and what happens here when something is missing removes a recurring source of friction permanently.
A note on transitions
If you are changing laboratory, let cases already in progress finish where they started — particularly anything with a staged sequence, a framework try-in, or components already ordered.
Running both arrangements in parallel for a few weeks costs a little administrative complexity and removes essentially all of the clinical risk.
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Send a case
Digital scans and conventional impressions are both accepted. Cases move by UPS and Purolator, and Fairmont works with practices throughout British Columbia and across Canada.