1. Align your practice
The new office should be large enough to comfortably meet the needs of your staff and patients. This statement seems fairly obvious, but we are constantly asked to advise on new (sometimes completed) office designs that, when evaluating the practice and its future, reveal plans that are significantly under or over-designed. A careful assessment of the practice numbers, including process analysis, provides a good indication of the appropriate targets. The aim is to create a patient flow that enables high efficiency and at the same time prevents system bottlenecks.
2. Your office and your life
We all know that dental care can be stressful. You and your employees need a place to relax and socialize. Leave room for a little fun. Ideally, this area should be as far away from the clinical room as possible. In contrast, to keep up to date, you should place your private office close to the clinical area to keep up with the essential activities that pay the bills. A conveniently located private office can help you keep up to date with the comings and goings of your practice and give clinical staff direct access to your services. Don't hide the real office manager - you - from the practice.
3. Hub and Spoke
Sterilization and resupply are the clinical heart of your production terminal. Think Federal Express! Make sure this area is central and fully equipped to both sterilize and replenish the entire facility. If you are setting up a facility with fewer than ten treatment areas, don't even consider multiple sterilization sites - centralize them. Also, don't waste money on a ready-made so-called "sterilization center". They are too compact for most offices and do not offer good value for money. The design details of your sterilization area are critical. Doctors are often sold sterilization devices that are faster and therefore supposedly more efficient.
The concept of rate-limiting steps has been little explored in dentistry. Simply put, an entire process will not run any faster than its slowest step will allow. In a busy office properly staffed for efficiency, the rate-limiting step in sterilization is how often a clinical worker is able to push the sterilization technology cycle, not how fast each individual piece of equipment is. Therefore, the fastest equipment seldom reaches its ultimate goal of returning instruments to treatment faster than a well-organized, high-flow sterile center. We're certainly not advocates of slow devices, but proper layout, usability, and durability should be key to purchasing decisions here.
4. Inventory is easy
Centralize all your storage, not just your bulk purchases. Also, consolidate your active storage for quick room replenishment. Far too many offices we visit are burdened with tens of thousands of dollars worth of consumables scattered throughout the office, making purchasing control and inventory rotation impossible, thereby inhibiting the introduction of new generations of products and the emergence allowed by product obsolescence. Your replenishment system should be hidden from the eyes of the patient but readily accessible to clinical staff for both quick access and easy inventory control. Products should not remain hidden from staff. Products should not be left in bulky promotional containers and should not be stacked vertically if possible.
5. Lab Links
Although every practitioner knows that the dental laboratory supplies directly, too many designs completely isolate these closely related areas. The office design should allow for quick and convenient moving between these locations, but they must be physically separated if even minor modeling work (trimming, etc.) is done in the office. Laboratories need doors. Sterilization and follow-up care must be open in the clinical room. Make sure the steady stream of items flowing between these areas is unimpeded. Separate and yet united.
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