How to grow your dental practice

Your guide to growing your existing practice or buying a second practice

  3 minutes

When your existing dental practice is in a ‘growth’ phase there are several different paths you can follow for expansion, but as a practice owner your time is tight so you quickly need to work out which one is right for you. Do you expand in your current premise by adding an extra chair and bringing on an associate dentist or a dental hygienist? Or, is space an issue so the better option is to open another practice in a second location? 

The whole idea of this guide is to help you quickly work out the pros and cons of each path.

Three options for growing your practice

When growing your own practice, you have three options: you can expand your existing practice in your current space, you can purchase a whole existing practice or set up another new practice from scratch.

Renting versus buying your practice premises

If you decide your best option is to set up a brand new practice, you will then need to decide either to buy or rent your premises. In our experience, there are pros and cons of each option, both practically and financially.

Understanding your loan options

It’s vital that you understand the financial implications of your decisions and that you make the best decisions for your circumstances and your goals. It’s all too easy to sign up for a loan that meets your immediate requirements, but doesn’t fit your medium and long term goals. When we tell you about the cost of a commercial loan, we will talk to you about the true cost from day one. Most banks will disclose the ‘headline rate’, which is the tempting interest rate, but this can be misleading as it doesn’t include establishment fees, lenders mortgage insurance and other bank fees.

Pre-loan checklist

Whichever loan option you take, you will need to do some homework so that you can present as much information as possible to your finance specialist.