How To Grow A Dental Practice

In this article, we’ll take a look at all the different factors you need to consider to grow a dental practice. From structuring your finances and accounts to digital marketing techniques, this guide will cover everything you need to know when it comes to growing a dental practice.

Why the Climate is Right for Growing a Dental Practice

According to a report published by IBIS World in 2017, the size of the dental market in the UK was £6.7bn, with a growth projection of 1.1% over the following five years. This means that the time is right to grow a dental practice. If you get it right, you can take advantage of the growing UK population, which is leading to a growing demand for dental health services nationwide.

The UK population is continuing to grow. By 2039 it’s estimated to reach 74 million. You can take a look at more detailed figures, provided by the Office for National Statistics. A growing population leads to an increased need for resources, including dental care. As strain on NHS dental care increases, there is an increased need for good quality private dental care.

The population is also ageing and, as the only part of the human body that has no self-repair ability, teeth require on-going repair and maintenance, if they are to last into later years. As I have discussed with several clients in recent years, there is plenty of opportunity to scale a dental practice, as long as the scaling process is completed correctly.

Listen to our podcast on the climate for dental practice growth in the UK.

Factors to Consider When Growing a Dental Practice

In order to grow a dental practice, it’s important to have a good understanding of the methods that you need to use. Making the right use of these methods is essential if you want your dental practice to expand and thrive.

From accounting and finances to the in’s and out’s of digital marketing, it’s essential that you consider all aspects of the business when you decide to grow your dental practice.

Click here to read more articles about growing a dental practice.

As a dental practice grows, there is likely to come a time when significant additional funding is required in order to scale further. This funding may be needed to purchase new equipment, to extend a current practice, or to buy more dental practices to become a group.

The first point I want to make is that it’s not all about profits when it comes to growing a dental surgery.

It’s important to consider the costs of running a practice, which are also likely to increase significantly over the coming years. For instance, payroll costs can account for almost 60% of revenue expenditure on average. In 2019 especially, the increase in the National Living Wage made a significant difference to dental practices that employ younger administration and support staff.

Click here to read more about the costs of running a dental practice.

These cost increases need to be factored into any decision to scale a dental practice. Other on-going costs that should be accounted for include non-payroll related expenses, such as the purchase of materials, payment of utility bills, insurance premiums and the cost of marketing.

The obvious lesson to take from all this is that any dental practice owner needs to concentrate their efforts on increasing revenue as soon as they take over at a practice or start up their own dental surgery. It’s these efforts that make expansion a possibility.

Click here to read about how to build a dental group.

Work with Professionals When Looking for Growth and Acquisition Financing

In the same way as it’s important to work with expert dental accountants and dental solicitors when financing and buying an initial dental practice, it’s also vital to work with professional brokers when you plan to grow your dental practice.

Click here to book a free consultation with our finance team and discuss your options.

Never forget that a dental surgery owners talents lie with running the practice itself and not with accounting or legal implications. It’s better to work with experts to deal with these factors. on these aspects of scaling a dental practice with clients on many occasions and it’s made the process a lot simpler for them.

Click here to read the 5 reasons you need to use a commercial finance broker.

Apply for Financing

There are a wide range of reasons for which you may need to raise funds as a dentist. From expanding the premises and equipping new surgeries to raising working capital or paying off outstanding debts, there will most likely come a time when you need to raise commercial finance.

Click here to find out more about funding options for dentists.

Banks and other financial institutions want to reduce their risk and tend to only lend to businesses that can prove they have reliable revenue and are in a position to make repayments on time.

It’s worth bearing this in mind when making decisions to grow a dental practice. Planning ahead is essential. Ideally, plan 10-12 months ahead of time, and make sure that revenue is optimised and accounts are up-to-date and accurate before applying for funding. When you apply for funding, be prepared to provide a significant amount of documentation including:

• An up-to-date business plan.
• Up-to-date and accurate accounts (personal and business).
• Up-to-date tax records.
• Details of expenditure.
• Detailed analysis of proposed finance spending and growth of the practice.

Click here to find out more about how banks judge dentists.

Having everything in one place before applying for growth or acquisition funding makes a successful outcome more likely. 

You can find more webinars and articles on financing the growth of a dental practice here.

Structure Your Accounts and Finances Correctly

We’re dental accountants at heart and we firmly believe that structuring your accounts correctly can make or break your business. You can save time, money and effort when you go digital with your accounts and use programmes like Xero and Quickbooks. Automating your accounts and finances with these kinds of programmes brings huge benefits for your business. You can read more about the benefits of automated accounts here.

As we’ve already mentioned, it’s essential that you choose a dental accountant who has experience in the dental industry. It’s not enough to find a good accountant. They need to have a working knowledge and understanding of the tax, accounting and financial issues facing the UK’s dentists.

Click here to listen to our podcast episode on how to structure your finances.

Maintain a High-Performing Team

When you set up your dental practice, you put a team in place that you could trust. It’s important to retain this team if you want to grow your dental practice successfully. This means that you have to consider several factors.

Make Sure The Working Environment is Positive.

A working environment that is less than positive will deter people from wanting to remain working at your practice. Make sure that everyone is aware of the vision of the practice and working towards it. You should also make sure that members of your team have access to the training and technology that they need.

Watch our webinar and listen to our podcast on leadership skills for dentists.

Encourage Good Performance.

You cannot grow a dental practice without having a high performing team in place. This is why it’s so important to make use of key performance indicators, SMART objectives and an effective appraisal system that includes an emphasis on personal development.

Read our article on building a dental team.

Make Sure That Communication Works.

Effective communication is central to the success and growth of any dental practice. This may sound easy, but communication can become confused and messy if you let it. Make use of tools such as a communications strategy, an Intranet system and weekly team meetings, to help make sure that this does not happen. It may sound simple, but a clear communication strategy that everyone understands can make the world of difference in any workplace.

Click here to watch our webinar on The Language of Communication.

All of these factors can help you to keep your high performing team in place.

Use Marketing to Grow A Dental Practice

You can have an exceptional dental practice, but it’s not going to grow and flourish if you do not market it effectively. Optimised marketing is essential to the growth of any business. It’s important that you emphasise the benefits that people can get from choosing your dental surgery, rather than simply concentrating on the brand itself.

It’s these benefits that will attract people to your practice and make it easier for you to retain their loyalty.

The first step is creating a website for your dental practice that ranks highly on Google and converts patients. It’s important that you understand the basics of SEO for websites, if you’re planning on creating it yourself. You can find out more about SEO for dental websites here.

Remember to keep your website’s layout simple. Make sure everything is easy to find and the menus are simple to navigate. Whilst you need videos, images and other widgets, it’s essential to keep in mind that speed is paramount. Don’t go overboard! Do not forget to optimise your website for mobile. More people use mobiles to access the internet than desktops or laptops.

You can find out more about creating a website for dentists here.

When you are marketing your dental practice, do not forget to make full use of social media. This is where large numbers of potential patients spend time. It’s the perfect place for you to reach them and communicate with them. You can also choose to pay for social media advertising with Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising.

Click here to read more about growing a dental practice with social media.

Your website and social media’s content should be central to your marketing efforts. You need to make sure that the content is fresh, interesting and well-written. Starting a blog may seem time-consuming but you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to get into – and how useful it is for marketing! Start writing your top tips, educating patients on your different treatments, start a newsletter. You’ll start attracting new, interested leads and it will improve SEO.

Click here to read more about writing content for dentists.

By getting the marketing right, you’ll attract new patients, convert leads and retain new patients far easier. Digital marketing especially is becoming more and more important with each year. You need to make sure you are paying attention to SEO, social media and PPC in particular to ensure the growth of your patient list and practice.

Watch our webinar on Using Marketing to Increase Profits.

Attract Emergency Patients

Emergency patients are our secret weapon to growing a dental practice. Emergency patients are actively and urgently looking for a dentist right now. They’re most likely in pain, a little desperate and willing to travel farther than general patients. Other patients are idly considering dental work sometime in the future while they look at your website. Emergency patients are looking for a dentist right here and right now. They’re qualified, hot leads just waiting to be converted.

The best bit is that you’re not just trying to attract patients for one-off emergency treatment. You were there for them when other dentists weren’t – maybe even their regular dentist. Hopefully your front-of-house and clinical staff impress them. This gives you a real chance of turning these emergency patients into regular patients. Patients will travel farther than you think for a dentist they like – make sure that dentist is you!

Click here to listen to our podcast on using emergency patients to grow a practice.

Retain New Patients

Attracting new patients is not enough to grow a dental practice, you need to make sure that they are retained. There are several things that you need to do, in order to make sure that this happens.

• Make a good first impression. Maintain a welcoming but tidy waiting room and making sure that reception staff are friendly as well as efficient. The importance of friendly front-of-house staff that your patients get on with cannot be overstated!
• Engage with your patients. No-one expects you, or the associates who work at your practice, to be best friends with patients. However, you do need to engage with them. Few patients will return to a dentist who is unapproachable and distant.
• Remind patients in a friendly manner. We all lead busy lives, and it’s easy to forget things like dental check-ups. Keep your patients engaged by sending them friendly reminders, but do not harass them with constant contact.
• Monitor the retention of patients. In order to understand how your patient retention efforts are working, you need to monitor their effectiveness. If you do not do this, you cannot hope to grow your dental practice successfully.

Read our article on retaining new dental patients.

Expanding a Dental Practice

If you’re successful in scaling a dental practice, there will hopefully come a time when a physical expansion is necessary. There may be an option to re-design the current surgery in order to make this happen. Or, it may be necessary to acquire additional property, in order for expansion to take place.

Optimising the use of current space

The first question to ask when looking for room to expand is, “How effective is the current use of space?”. For instance, staff break rooms do not need to be large, luxurious spaces. They simply need to be a place to take a reasonably comfortable break before returning to work. It may be possible to use some of this space as a treatment area.

Unused hallways and storage areas can also be utilised. Take the time to consider the current usage of the entire surgery space, and come up with new design options. This can save on the cost of having to acquire additional premises, in some circumstances.

Click here to read our guide to commercial mortgages.

Dealing with the landlord

This will only be an issue if the leasehold of the property is not owned by the dental practice. If this is the case, it’s important to discuss any refurbishment or re-design ideas with the landlord first. Failure to do so could lead to legal complications further down the line.

Depending on how good the relationship with the landlord is, there could be an argument for involving a dental solicitor. At least you need to be seeking their advice and support.

The Issue of Planning Permission

If the purpose of the premises is to remain the same, it’s unlikely that planning permission will be needed. However, there may be times when there will be a need to acquire planning permission when extending a dental practice. For instance, part of the property which is currently being used as a residence may be converted for business use. Also, neighbouring residential property may be purchased for conversion.

Any property that is going to be used as part of a dental practice should have Class E planning consent. If the correct consent is not in place, it’s possible that enforcement penalties could be imposed. It’s always best to check if planning consent is needed, before going ahead and making any changes. The government provides advice on this subject.

Our Expert Opinion

“There’s no one particular route to grow a dental practice. It requires a multi faceted approach to ensure you achieve your goal of growth. Marketing, finance, pricing, teamwork plus of course great clinical care, all contribute to growing your practice.

How do we grow our practices? We focus on improving online visibility with SEO and sometimes Pay-Per-Click campaigns targeting emergency patients. We have also recently expanded our Esher practice by turning under-used office space into more clinic space.”

Arun Mehra FCA

Samera CEO

You can book a free consultation with Arun here.

Reviewed By

Chris O’Shea

Head of Marketing

Chris is a digital marketing expert and head of marketing at Samera. He specialises in SEO and content strategy for healthcare businesses.

Arun Mehra

Samera CEO

Arun, CEO of Samera, is an experienced accountant and dental practice owner. He specialises in accountancy, financial directorship, squat practices and practice management.