InPractice: The Goetze Dental Blog

Every doctor wants their practice to be financially successful, but striking a balance between providing excellent patient care and maximizing the profit of the business is not always easy to navigate.  For some dentists, being the CEO doesn’t come naturally and, as a result, they tend to focus more on the delivery of patient care. Having a busy office and full chairs often becomes the yardstick for measuring a practice’s business performance and they may not routinely look at numbers behind the numbers or for opportunities to improve.

Nothing is more fundamental to a business than finances and accounting. Unfortunately, private dental practices sometimes overlook these tasks for more urgent matters, like taking care of patients. After all, serving patients is the reason you are in business in the first place.

The truth is that every practice can benefit from better control over their books, but better accounting does not have to be complicated. For many dentists, profitability can be improved by simply getting paid for the work they have already done.

What has a 20% return on investment and is 95% automated? And also helps your patients move forward with the treatment they need?

In our last blog post, we discussed how equipment specialists play an important role in the dental office design project. However, their expertise is not just limited to equipment. Equipment specialists like Bart Miller lend a hand in nearly every aspect of the planning process.

You may have already read up on our previous blog posts where we explored everything from building your brand to creating your dental office floor plan. Now it’s time to dive into the real star of the show: Equipment!

The dental office floor plan is one of the most entangled parts of a dental office design project. It impacts every other aspect of the project– aesthetics, equipment, location, budget– but is also determined by these aspects. This relationship results in a circular planning process that can be difficult to navigate.

Designing a brand new dental office is a dream for many dentists, but it’s not just about aesthetics. Whether you’re a new doctor or have been practicing for decades, a new office can be a great business decision.

Planning and designing a new dental office is incredibly exciting for a private practice. It is something only experienced once or twice in a career. You want to make sure everything goes right, and the best way is to lean on professionals who have done it before.

In 2013, Dr. Chris Hickerson located the perfect space for his new practice in his hometown of Derby, Kansas. He needed a partner to help with the buildout, and a conversation with an old classmate led him to Goetze Dental.

Dr. Brandon Patten and his team were tired of working in the dark. His practice– Ames Family Dental in Ames, Iowa– had been located in a basement for 43 years and had zero natural light. When Patten was offered an opportunity to buy land, he acted fast. The next step was to find a partner to help him build and design the new office.