Increasing the Number of Operatories in Your Dental Office

Posted by HJT Design

As your dental practice becomes more successful, you will begin to attract more patients. However, you will eventually reach a limit to the number of patients that you can see. Even if you hire new staff so that you can handle an increased patient load, you may find yourself limited by the space of your practice. If this becomes the case, you may want to begin figuring out how you can increase the number of operatories in your dental office.

The Benefits of Adding Operatories

There are a couple of reasons why you should strongly consider increasing the operatories of your dental practice. The following are some of the major reasons:

• Take on more patients – The last thing you’ll want to do as a professional within the healthcare industry is to turn patients down. You’re in it to help people, first and foremost, after all. By adding operatories to your practice, you will be able to see more patients at once, thereby allowing you to take on new patients.
• Increase revenue – Taking on new patients will result in more revenue, it’s a simple as that. The ability to not only take on more patients but to see more patients at once will greatly improve your revenue as well. The extra space means that you will be able to take on more emergency cases as well, which tend to bring in even more revenue.
• Reduce wait times – If just a single appointment takes longer than expected, your waiting room can quickly become crowded as more and more appointments are delayed and pushed back, leading to frustrated patients. The more operatories you have, the less time patients will have to wait in order to be seen.

Ways to Increase the Number of Operatories

Now that we’ve established that you can probably benefit from increasing the number of operatories in your dental office, you’ll need to figure out how to do it. While you could just move to a bigger office, this is rarely the most cost-effective option and would result in a lot of downtime. Instead, you should think about remodeling your existing office. The following are a few ways that you can add operatories to your existing dental practice:

• Turn existing space into a new operatory – You may have more space than you realize. For example, you may have an entire room dedicated to storage that you could turn into a treatment room. Instead of keeping your paperwork in a storage room, consider digitizing it. This will allow you to keep your paperwork in a storage unit since you’ll be able to access the information on your computer instead. Documents that you absolutely must have on the premises can be transferred to a file cabinet in your private office.
• Expand your dental office – If your office is on a piece of land that you own, you could expand your office by extending the building so that you can add new operatories. You’ll have to research local city regulations to determine if this is possible. If you are renting, this might not be an option (although you could speak with the landlord).
• Create an open treatment space – Instead of looking to build more rooms, knock down the walls between your existing operatories. An open treatment area will allow each operatory to share equipment and storage space, thereby making more efficient use of the space you have.

These are just a few ways that you can increase the number of operatories in your dental practice. For more dental office remodeling ideas, be sure to contact us at HJT Dental Design Consultants today.