How To Open A Dental Office

The #1 Resource for Practical Tips on Opening Your New Dental Office. Start-up Practices and Renovation Projects can be Smooth, Easy and Fun with the Right Knowledge. Discover The Best Tools and Connect with Others Who have Successful Knowledge.

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OpenADentalOffice

This post will show you the 5 Essentials I’ve witnessed in building a dental office from scratch over nearly a decade. 

But don’t be fooled…it’s not easy.

These are the biggest dental office success factors I’ve witnessed among a few hundred practices because there ARE commonalities. But there are no magic potions or guarantees and if you can take the best ideas from the best practices, you’ll be way ahead of the curve.

First, I’d like to ask you to take a trip down memory lane with me. 

Remember the moment when you passed your boards? A few things went better than you expected over the last 4 years and you’re proud.

Now you have the 3 initials after your name and its official.

You may now introduce yourself with a title – what a transformative moment! So much of the path for the rest of your life was birthed right out of that moment.

Then it was time to get a job. Maybe even make an income. An exciting new world, free of the stress from exams and instructors. The associate life would be temporary, you promised yourself. It would only be a matter of time until you would be in the driver seat and putting your concepts to the test.

Can you remember that?

Most often, associates tell me they’re students. Students within their associating practice, learning the best tips and tricks in their employers’ offices in preparation of their future practice ownership; there own dental office success.   It’s a smart move! Learn from a seasoned, battle tested practice where you have a front row seat and a spot behind the curtain to see how the play is put on.

Well, what if you could look behind the curtain and borrow the best ideas from the top few hundred dental offices in your area?

How much better might you have been prepared if you could have interviewed and worked alongside 10 practices? How about 50? Or 250? With that kind of experience, you may be able to design the perfect practice by learning the key elements for dental office success, owner satisfaction and patient health, right?

Well, that’s exactly what I want to share with you.

Don’t believe the hype about “x” number of magic steps to make it a success. That’s a bunch of crap. If you could build a dental practice in “x” number of steps, you would never see a practice management firm (none of them would be in business if it only took a few steps) and you’d never see practices looking for new patients, and you’d never have to participate with insurance companies.

The point?

The point is that building dental office success isn’t as easy as a few little steps.

We’ll look at 5 Essentials of what could be thousands – but these 5 stand out in all dental office success stories and are the best of the best aspects to focus on as you build your practice from scratch.

So without any further ado, the most proven, most tested and biggest results yielding dental practice success steps are… 

1.)   Location:

Choose your location wisely – this starts with analysis of demographics (see my blog post on demographics to see the 12+1 crucial demographic data for dentists –considering any town without these may leave you struggling for new patients indefinitely)

2.)  Team: 

Choose your “Practice Project Team” well – this includes your realtor, your equipment specialist, a dental designer, dental lender and dental specific construction firm.

Each of your “Practice Project Team” members must have at least 10 completed, amazing projects that they can show you.  This is critical to your dental office success. Expect nothing less or you will get something much less.

3.)   Compelling Offer:

Before patients know you, they need to be compelled to come visit your dental office. Willyou wait for emergencies or will you find a compelling way to bring more patients to your practice?

There are plenty of dental office success stories with high integrity and minimal PPO influence who collect over a million dollars just a few years after opening day. But in order to produce any dentistry, you need patients to come to your practice. They won’t come unless you can compel them and there are effective ways to do this.

4.)   Leadership from YOU:

The onus is on you. The buck stops with you. Your team needs your vision. Vision requires that you have a destination, a direction and standards. Decide what those are for you in each category in your practice and your team will thrive! Leadership is not complicated but it does require planning, preparation and communication…and if you can do that consistently with your team, you will reach incredible levels that you could never reach alone.

5:)   Insurance Partnering:

One of the least discussed but most highly successful strategies for your new practice.There is a way to for your practice to win 

with

 insurance companies 

and

 patients. It’s possible to have all 3 parties win (practice, patient, insurance firm) but the right discussions need to take place as you look for the location of your new dental office. 

By Jayme Amos