Want to open a Dental Practice?

We’re excited to bring you a four-part series to open a dental practice, from finding the right location to opening the doors, this is your step-by-step guide to crossing off all the boxes to ensure smooth sailing throughout the build process. We’ll offer you some of the key points you’ll need to consider before opening a dental practice. Our first topic is Investment. Let’s start at the very beginning.

 Location, Location, Location!
Some of you might already have the site then your hardest decision has been made but maybe you want to open a new practice or you have outgrown your current premises and need something bigger. When you select the right location your dental practice will BOOM! Make sure you considering some of the following when selecting your dental practice location:

• See where your closest competitor is, opening up directly opposite an existing practice isn’t going to be good for anyone.
• Are there good parking facilitates?
• Plenty of drive-by cars. Dental Practices on main roads are like a free billboard!
• Ease of access – can your patients including elderly, mum’s with prams and people in wheelchairs get to the front door easily.
• Look at the suburb demographics on the Australian Bureau of Statistic’s website. Here you can find the average age, gender, income and a whole lot more to get a feel of who is living close-by. (This will then help determine your branding, what type of practice you want to have and pricing structure!)

Now you need Finance
Once you’ve found a site, you need to find a finance consultant to get your dental practice off the ground. It’s good to speak to a few people and get an idea of how much you can borrow plus what interest rates and bank charges apply to the loan. Your first meeting with a financer will give you an indication of what you can actually borrow, however you’ll need to provide them some of the information that we discuss in our next step; The Business Plan.

The Business Plan
Every business needs one. Your business plan will keep you on track, set your goals, give you an idea of what you can achieve, and also let you workout your expenses to determine how much your practice needs to be making to reach break-even and demonstrate profit potential! Some items of agenda for your business plan should include:

•  Set your sales figures, how much can you make if you have 1, 2 or 3 rooms depending on the occupancy rates of the rooms, will your rooms be filled 50%, 75% or 100% of operating hours?
• Analyse your costs, think about rent, equipment, utility bills, consumables, wages, marketing and so the list goes one. Costs will also vary depending on how many rooms your practice will have. Complete a realistic feasibility to work out your ROI.
• Timeline – it’s a good idea to consider your business growth speed. If you’re opening a brand new practice chances are you’re not going to be running at 90% capacity within one month of opening the doors. Consider your projections for 1, 3 and 5 years and get a realistic goal to building your practice up to full speed.
• It’s also important to consider a timeline to getting the doors open. Think about the time to complete your fitout until you’re ready for patients  and when you’ll start to see revenue in your  bank account.

We hope you enjoyed our first part on this four-part series to opening up your dental practice. If you’d like any more information about selecting a site or about your dental practice fitout and equipment pricing please call Dentec on 1800 88 44 44 or contact us via our web form.

In our next part we’ll discuss planning your dental practice fitout and will cover topics such as space planning, interior design and branding!