Starting-up a New Practice from Scratch
In the past, starting up a new practices from scratch was one of the primary ways that dentists became practice owners. Those days are gone. Most metropolitan areas have a saturation of dental practices and dental practitioners are less likely to serve rural communities.
With population to general practitioner ratios below 2000: 1, it is difficult to find good new start-up locations in metropolitan areas. It is possible in high population growth areas that new start-ups can be successful in retail environments.
You should rely on dental realty specialists with experience in new start-ups to assist you. It’s easy to rely on dental equipment people or others in the dental industry who want to sell you something but you need to rely on specialists. Too much risk is involved to make mistakes.
Don’t succumb to the Hotel California Syndrome, “You can check out anytime you like but you can never leave.” If you invest $600,000+ into what you thought was a great new start-up location and it turns out not to be, you might want to leave but you can’t. You will owe the bank a lot of money and you have too much invested in your build-out to relocate. So you might mentally check out but you’ll be there for many years and stuck in a bad situation.
GET PROPER ASSISTANCE TO CHOOSE A GOOD LOCATION.
If your advisor does not give you population to practitioner ratios for various prospective new start-up locations without you asking, then find a new advisor.
