In Australia, dental clinics must follow specific regulations that affect all areas of running a dental clinic. This includes how you will control infection, how waste is managed, how to protect patient privacy, and how to ensure that your clinics are accessible. Before a dental office can be occupied by patients, it must be compliant both with the guidelines set forth by the Australian Dental Association and with the applicable state health facility standards and the National Construction Code that applies to all health facilities.
Compliance with the regulations described above is not optional and retrofitting after the completion of the build, will be extremely expensive and disruptive. Compliance issues must be taken into account during the design of the project, prior to the start of any construction. A professional fit-out application should be developed by a qualified fit-out specialist who has experience in designing and constructing fit-outs for use in healthcare facilities. Therefore, compliance with and consideration for all applicable compliance requirements will be included in the design phase of all phases of the project (from beginning to end).
Compliance Comes First
All dental practices in Australia must follow very strict guidelines regarding; how to control infection, how to dispose of waste, the privacy of their patients and how accessible they are to their patients. When building a new dental practice, the design and construction must meet the requirements outlined by the Australian Dental Association, the relevant state health facility regulations and the National Construction Code for Health Facilities before the practice can accept patients.
It is imperative that dental practices meet these guidelines. Failing to do so will require an enormous and disruptive amount of money and time to “retrofit” your facility to meet the necessary regulations. It is therefore essential that compliance to these guidelines are taken into account during the design phase of the project prior to any construction taking place. A professional fit-out company should have design and construction capabilities specific to health care facilities and will therefore be familiar with compliance regulations from the onset of the project.
Workflow Design Determines Efficiency
The physical layout of your dental clinic fitout affects how patients flow through the practice. Likewise, how smoothly your staff can complete their job duties is also affected. Treatment rooms, for example, should be laid out to minimise excess movement between them and sterilisation rooms. Every day, your team will experience friction if they need to move through the reception area to get to the sterilisation room.
Be sure to think through your zoning carefully. Clinical areas, staff areas, patient areas, and office areas should all be kept separate from one another in a logical fashion, and no unnecessary barriers should be built between them. In addition, a good dental clinic fit-out takes into account patient movement; that is, the patient comes into the clinic, receives treatment, and then leaves, as well as instrument, waste, and supply movement.
Patient Experience Matters More Than You Might Think
Many patients suffer from dental anxiety. As a result, your business has a chance to help alleviate that anxiety, or exacerbate it. Examples of how to alleviate this anxiety include: having as much natural light available in the clinic; using calming colours for the patients; providing acoustic soundproofing from the treatment area into the waiting room; and designing a welcoming, rather than, institutional style, at your reception. All of these things make an initial powerful impression on your patients, and ultimately will determine how loyal they are to you.
When patients feel comfortable when they visit your clinic, there will be an increased likelihood that they will return, refer others to you, and complete their recommended treatment plan. Therefore, the fitout will have an effect on your clinical outcomes.
Budgeting and Future-Proofing
The fitout of a dental clinic is a major capital expense, so going for cheaper finishes in the design may result in having to spend more on repairing or replacing those finishes due to the inability to maintain the necessary standard of cleanliness in the clinic’s treatment spaces, inadequate plumbing for additions to the equipment at the clinic, and/or electrical systems that can not support future additions of equipment. Each of these issues can create unexpected and costly problems down the road.
The design of the space should also consider how to include as much as possible in the way of flexibility; i.e., the design should have conduits for future cabling, enough electrical power to support possible future growth, and treatment room sizes that will accommodate newer and larger pieces of equipment as they become available. The total cost of a fitout designed with future growth in mind will dwarf the cost of a fitout designed to simply reduce costs over the next ten years.
