Welcome back to “This Can All Be Easier” blog.  My name is Angie Bachman. We are half-way through Dental office design month and I have to tell you, it has been great!  A few days ago, I received an S.O.S. from a doc in Minneapolis. “We’re at the point of….not many options, can you help us?” “Well, I have a team that certainly can”, I said.  I know he’s not alone. 

This week, I enlisted the expertise from Paul Leonard, Senior Dental Office Designer at Design Ergonomics to discuss some options just when you think nothing is possible:  

There are times when remodeling your dental office may be the best option for you. 

If growth and capacity become issues but a new location is out of reach for any number of reasons, remodeling your current office may be a way to improve the current space in order to increase patient flow, thereby increasing profitability.

Renovations and remodels can take a variety of shapes, from strategic enhancements to complete gut-and-rebuilds. The direction you go depends on your goals, resources and the restraints of your current space. But it’s important to note that the restraints you think you see may not be as much of an obstacle as you think.

Oftentimes adding just one treatment room can be a cost effective path to increasing your bottom line - and doing so may not require tearing down walls and “starting over”. We’ve designed fully functional operatories into spaces as small as 6’ x 8’. Got a storage closet that you’re not using (or using inefficiently)? That space might be a candidate for a “Small Room Solution” that could generate an addition $20K or more a month at your practice - serving more of your patient base, increasing capital, and continuing your growth trajectory.

Along with increasing capacity, improvements in other key areas can have significant impacts on performance and productivity, while creating a more attractive and comfortable space for your team and your patients.

Ascot Family Dental

Rethinking reception and waiting areas can do more than just improve your practice’s image. With often minor restructuring, your Check-out to Check-in ratio can be increased which will improve patient throughput by eliminating one of the largest bottlenecks that many practices face.

One of the most common updates we make is in Sterilization and Resupply. A re-design here can allow for a much more streamlined environment that eliminates unnecessary waste in both time and inventory management. The result will improve on-time performance and enhance the procedure capabilities of your existing treatment spaces.

Finally, the treatment rooms. Changes here can be simple; eliminating clutter and adding in high technology items can markedly improve ergonomics and efficiency, patient to patient. Or you can take a more aggressive approach and really increase capacity (and revenue) by converting a few poorly designed, inefficient operatories into a larger number of high-performance spaces. These rooms will produce more - and you’ll have more of them.

Operatory Renovation

Of course, you might have an opportunity for more than a renovation. If expansion is an option, the possibilities (and potential practice improvements) become much greater. In these cases, phasing in one or all modifications by creating a master plan for your office is an efficient and strategic method to achieve the goals of your practice - whatever they are. Our design team has developed hundreds of these “master plans” taking offices from 4 treatment rooms to 15+ depending on your vision and goals. 

I can’t thank you enough, Paul.  I love it how he highlights many situations dental practice owners find themselves in. You’ve opened the door for so many discussions. The bottom line is you do have options.  Don’t worry, along with these options comes Reboot Training - a new, simpler way to practice without bottlenecks because this can all be easier.