A couple of years ago, I bought over my practice, called For You Dental, located in Dallas. The dentist who had been running the practice was retiring, and I thought it would be a good investment for me, and a great way to kick-start my own practice. Like many of my peers, I’m sure, at first I was a bit unsure of my decision. But after getting it up and running, I realized there were so many benefits from buying a dental practice.
Existing patients
One of the biggest benefits of buying a dental practice is that there is an existing database of patients. Depending on the practice that you buy, this could be hundreds or thousands of patients that have visited this practice. It’s important to note that when transitioning from an existing dentist to a new one, patients should be well informed about the changes. After my transition occurred, a lot of patients who had been coming regularly decided to move to a different dentist. That’s perfectly understandable, especially if they had been going to the same dentist for years, and a new one has now taken over the practice.
However, a lot of patients did chose to stay, and from that list I was able to build up and continue to work for more. As opposed to dentists who start a practice from scratch, buying a practice made finding more patients easier and less costly.
Employee acquisition
Another great thing about buying a dental practice was the employees who were already working at the practice. Some of them had been working at the practice for years, so they had a lot of insight on the patients and how the previous dentist had run the practice.
As expected, some employees left because of the new management, but I was able to retain several who had already helped build the practice, and hire new people who joined the team to help the practice grow. They really helped make the transition easier for the existing patients and me, and they reassured us that there was nothing to worry about.
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Building a reputation
The third benefit I got out of buying a dental practice was that the dentist before me already had a good reputation. The brand that he had created was known among his patients as respectable, and from there I hoped to make the brand better. I recently started investing in search engine optimization and Internet marketing. It has worked wonders, bringing what branding I already had to light.
It may seem like a huge investment to purchase a dental practice, but there are benefits that certainly pay off in the long run. If I hadn’t come upon the opportunity to buy For You Dental, I don’t know where I’d be today.
Dr. Ashlea Drakeford is the owner of For You Dental in Dallas, Texas. When she’s not managing her practice, she loves spending time with her twin sons.
