August 31, 2022
The Best Dental Practice Renovations to Make
No matter how often we’re told not to judge a book by its cover, it’s undeniable that clients and patients form quick opinions about businesses based on their appearance. When it’s time to go see a professional, clients naturally associate the state of the office or location with their success and quality. In order to provide the best patient experience possible and to put your best foot forward to improve your dental practice in all areas, consider making improvements to these areas through dental practice renovations.
1. Waiting Room
When it comes to making a strong first impression, your waiting room and receptionist area play a huge role. Many people may have negative assumptions or nervous feelings about going to the dentist. Walking into a waiting room that feels welcoming, updated, and thoroughly thought-out can help put these doubts at ease. In renovating your waiting room, consider features such as:
- Floor plan
- Furniture arrangement
- Amenities like TVs and magazines
- Paint colors
Incorporating a calming color scheme and an intuitive flow to the reception area can instantly calm a patient’s nerves and improve patient experience tremendously. Executing a luxury dental office design is all in the details: is the furniture comfortable? Are the materials throughout the room high-quality and updated? Does it look, feel, and smell clean? While some of these aspects lie in properly maintaining your space, they also rely on refreshed materials and routinely updated design.
2. Offices
The offices and workspaces at your dental practice are just as important to your overall renovation and design as the patient-facing areas. Having updated and comfortable offices is crucial in keeping productivity high and serving patients thoroughly. However, offices are often forgotten in dental office renovation projects because they may seem less important than the waiting room and patient rooms. Elements to consider for the renovation of your office include:
- Updating workspaces to include outlets and technology to streamline your work
- Organizing floor space by adding built-in shelves or file cabinets
- Adding more comfortable furniture around desks and tables
Part of providing the best patient experience possible is ensuring that dentists in the office are able to work comfortably and efficiently. With a dated set-up or uncomfortable floor plan, completing patient notes and planning follow-ups can fall to the wayside or take much longer than necessary.
3. Patient Rooms
Patients at a dental practice will generally split their time between the waiting room and a patient room. In the waiting room, it’s likely that patients will be flipping through a magazine, browsing on their phone, or filling out paperwork. However, much of the time spent in patient rooms is spent uncomfortably staring at the wall or ceiling. Fortunately, choosing to renovate your patient rooms gives you the opportunity to include amenities that will set your practice apart in terms of patient comfort.
For example, some practices have renovated patient rooms to include TVs where patients can choose a show or movie to play during their appointment. This can help ease nerves and improve patient experience during lulls such as the time waiting for novocaine to set in or while waiting to be seen by the dentist. On the other hand, even a simple renovation to take care of dated paneling, popcorn ceilings, or old paint can shift the feel of a patient room from old and drab to clean and new.
4. Storage
Dentistry, like every branch of the medical industry, involves a wide variety of tools and materials that are single-use or that need frequent updating and maintenance. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to run out of time in the day for keeping all of these tools and materials organized. For this reason, renovating your storage areas such as closets, supply rooms, and cabinets can completely overhaul your everyday processes in the best way possible.
Instead of scrambling throughout your practice to find the right glove sizes or the correct tool for your next patient, with the right storage renovation you’ll know exactly where to find what you need, and it will be easily accessible! Clearing floor space in favor of shelves and bins not only makes your office safer in terms of fire and emergency response, but also allows you to improve patient experience by cutting down on prep time between patients.
Get Started Today!
By renovating both patient-facing areas and your behind-the-scenes work and storage spaces, you can elevate the experience of each patient through a luxury dental office design. The team at DeLeers would love to work together to plan and execute your vision for your dental practice.
Message or call our commercial building experts at 920-347-5830 with any questions on dental office building and remodeling.