Dentists Should Consider An Open Treatment Area

Posted by HJT Design

The layout of your dental practice is extremely important to the efficiency and overall feel of the space. It’s why you might want to consider going with an open treatment area design instead of having separate treatment rooms as is the typical standard. The following are some of the reasons why you should think about switching to an open treatment area design:

Put Your Patients At Ease

A lot of patients feel uncomfortable spending time at any kind of medical practice. If they can’t see the treatment area while they are waiting, they’ll often grow tense and nervous. It doesn’t help much either when you put a patient in a room by themselves to wait until someone can see them. When the treatment area is open and patients can see everything, their mind is more likely to be at ease.

Prevent Smaller Rooms

If you don’t have that much space, then your treatment rooms might be on the smaller side of things. If they’re too cramped, it can be uncomfortable for patients and make it difficult for dentists and nurses to do their jobs. An open treatment area will make the space seem a lot larger.

Reduce Need for Equipment and Furniture

If you have individual treatment rooms, it means each one is going to have to be outfitted with its own equipment and furniture. In an open space, equipment and furniture can be shared. For example, if you have two patient tables near each other, they can share a large cabinet for storage.

Improve The Flow Of Traffic

It’s much easier for dentists, nurses and patients to move around the practice in an open space. When the practice is split up into separate rooms, the hallways are more likely to get clogged up with traffic.

Improve Overall Efficiency

With an open treatment area, it will be easy to see where all the patients are. In practices with separate rooms, dentists and nurses often have a hard time finding the patient they’re looking for and have to spend time guiding patients to their designated rooms. It’s also easier to lose track of a patient when they’ve been put into a room, causing them to wait for long periods of time unnecessarily.

Take Advantage of Existing Space

Creating an open treatment area is easier than adding additional treatment rooms. Even if you have the space in your office to build more treatment rooms, it’s going to require a lot of construction planning and work, whereas an open treatment area is a lot easier to execute since knocking down some walls is generally the most challenging part of the process.

Provide Future Flexibility

There’s a pretty good chance that you’re going to invest in more equipment as your practice grows in the future. Even if you don’t grow that much, you’re probably going to need to add equipment to your practice to stay up-to-date with the latest dental technology. It’s going to be a challenge figuring out where to house your equipment in a practice that is divided into many different rooms. If you have an open treatment area, then figuring out where you’ll put new equipment won’t take much time at all since you can easily shift furniture and existing equipment around.

An open treatment area offers numerous benefits to your dental practice. It’s something that you should consider, especially if the space you have available is on the smaller side, to begin with. To schedule a free consultation, be sure to contact us at HJT Dental Office Design today.