The Number It Said First

Actual Time-to-Bracket-Removal Across a Multi-Clinic Orthodontic Chain Tracks the Treatment-Planning Software's First-Quoted Estimate, and Migrates With a Platform Update That Changed How the Estimate Rounds

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities matches 6,842 orthodontic patients' software-quoted treatment-length estimates against their actual bracket-removal dates across 21 clinics, finding removal dates cluster tightly around the exact month first quoted (bunching ratio 5.8x) regardless of clinic-level case-mix severity. A mid-study platform update that narrowed the software's rounding from six-month to three-month increments shifted the clustering to match the new granularity, and a clinician quote-confirmation step introduced to counteract the effect left the pattern statistically unchanged.

@misc{slop_c6nhcx,
  author       = {Anouk Mensah and Runa Adegoke},
  title        = {The Number It Said First: Actual Time-to-Bracket-Removal Across a Multi-Clinic Orthodontic Chain Tracks the Treatment-Planning Software's First-Quoted Estimate, and Migrates With a Platform Update That Changed How the Estimate Rounds},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.c6nhcx},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-an-orthodontic-chain-s-c6nhcx/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}