Doctor Liu came to me with a free space plan from a dental equipment company for help with selecting finishes and designing the lab and sterilization workflows. This was her start up dental practice in San Jose, CA and she was feeling overwhelmed with all the decisions to be made.

When I met the contractor at the jobsite to discuss some concerns I had with the plan and confirm the existing conditions, I found that the equipment company plans were over two feet larger (left to right) than the actual conditions across the clinic and over a foot in the already narrow staff and lab corridor.

Absolutely everything needed to shift!

And in a suite this size, you can see we were in dire straights.

While the circular flow was a sad loss, starting over with a new suite was not an option, the lease had been signed and the space was clear and ready for framing.

She thought she would have to lose an operatory. But we were able to redesign the space, keeping the private room and four opts, making better use of the space, increasing sterilization so that it would handle her volume of processing, and keeping the public spaces feeling as spacious as possible, and away from the working spaces of the sterilization, lab, staff and doctor’s areas.

Doctor Jones is building her forever office and she wants something a little different. She wants to be able to take care of herself and her staff as well as she takes care of her patients. A comfortable doctor’s office with a room she can use when her children come and beautiful staff room with all the amenities.

Her lab is going digital soon and will be a display piece to show off her office’s state of the art approach to orthodontics.

With COVID in full swing, and because she is providing more personal and concierge service, she wants the flexibility to have every treatment room feel private with top notch infection control without throwing the feel of an open bay out with the bathwater.

Her local architect was not getting any closer to her dream after many iterations and she was recommended to me by one of her equipment supplier.

Using a combination of sliding glass doors and full and partial walls we were able to create the perfect ortho bay for her practice.

Using her limited space to the fullest, her hallways became shorter and more functional, graceful curves welcomed new patients and provided easy check out and exit for existing patients. Brushing remained private but connected to the waiting area since she prefers to work without an On Deck area.

And a multi purpose private treatment area can serve beautifully for, Observation, Pediatric Quite Room, Overflow TC Room, Family Treatment. or as her own Consultation Room or her children’s Homework Room.

Doctor Johnson worked with a local architect with minimal Specialty Dental experience and was getting nowhere fast.

He had purchased a piece of property and was finally ready to build his flagship office, with plenty of space for his large and growing practice.

The building the architect was working on kept growing and growing but the clinic just didn’t function the way the doctor needed.

When Dr. Johnson came to me he gave me free reign and we hired a shell architect to join the team along with the contractor he already had on board.

We reoriented the building so that the clinical areas could face North and East for best light throughout the treatment day.
We opened up the treatment area, deciding to keep his rear delivery where he and his team were comfortable working.

To the right side of the building we designed a large addition for future growth adding another 6 treatment chairs, an associates office, an arcade pass through from the existing waiting room (moving one bathroom back to back with the exisiting) and a large new Storage Room.

The doctor decided he did not want to use an on deck but made space available for parents and siblings to come back to the bay. He also made sure to have a preparatory brushing station and a station to send patients to close to the clinic for brushing mid treatment.

His Doctor’s Perch tucked into a more private hall and both the new patient suite and the open bay got easy access to Imaging.

Private Treatment Rooms and Records/Observations Rooms could be shared depending on time of day needed for the new patient flow or the treatment flow.

PDGO, A four doctor partnership of Pediatric Dentists and an Orthodontist worked with a local architect on their seven thousand square foot flagship practice. This was an existing building with great visibility in the community but, like all doctors, they had a program that was larger than the available square footage.

When they came to me the project was struggling through many iterations that were just not working and they were concerned about budget.

I asked them to have faith that we could design in everything possible and then work together with the builder to value engineer the project so that it would fit in their budget.

Together we walked a path keeping some of the graceful curves they liked in the architect’s plan while keeping building costs under control.

We increased the functionality of the space by more clearly defining where their bottle necks in patient flow would be. We made room for functions like incoming and outgoing calls without impacting the work at the Front Desk and at Check Out Stations. We created spaces adjacent to the clinic for doctor Exit Checks that would not hold Hygiene and Treatment chairs longer than needed and so that doctor’s time could be used efficiently.

We also increased the amount and usability of Storage Rooms.

We planned for future additional Oral Surgery services with a wide back hall, larger doors and direct private exiting out the back of the building. With two Sedation and Recovery rooms along a dedicated Treatment and Imaging hallway.

In the end we were able to save the doctors nearly $400,000 in through value engineering: changing curved walls to facets, replacing materials, fixtures and furnishings with more cost effective options, removing items from the plan that were not needed or could be added easily in the future, or simply changing manufacturers to get similar items at better prices.

Dr. Sara Gallaas contacted me after being referred by Boyd Industries. Her father and she were planning an office to house them both as she came into the practice. They had a floor plan and were ready to build but their Boyd rep was afraid it was the wrong plan with an inefficient sterilization room, and no flow back out to waiting from the clinic. As I like to say, “You spend the same construction dollars building out a bad plan as you do building the perfect one”.

The ortho bay and new patient suite configuration was just what they wanted so we made minor changes to increase the space inside TC and Records. We also kept the business office, doctor’s nook, patient bathroom and finance making minor improvements to functionality.

The main problem was the back of house areas (Sterilization, Staff, Lab, Janitor etc..) Sterilization was too large making it inefficient. The janitor’s room was a blockade to any natural flow through the office. The patient flow was something we might see in an in-line retail space that doesn’t have the width for a circular patient flow. And worse, wasted a lot of space in non revenue making rooms.

In Sterilization an island is not helpful. Osha and common sense have us running from dirty to clean with clean set up storage ending as close to the clinic as possible. The islands are stuck between dirty and clean too close to both so really, can’t be used for either. The room provided was much too large to be efficient. This might be the first and last time I’m shown a plan with too much room in sterilization but I guess the law of probability says it’s bound to happen sometime. The size of this room would be adequate for a 15 chair clinic, but we would still need to remove the island and make the room narrower to make it efficient.

Centralizing Sterilization we created a hall for exiting patient flow back to the front desk from the ortho bay. This left what was the sterilization space available as a magic extra treatment chair they would soon grow into, increasing their potential profitability by tens of thousands.

I worked with Dr. Grant Bailey on his flagship office in Salt Lake City while I was the lead designer for another design firm. So when he called me to remodel his existing satellite office in Farmington I knew we had some challenges to overcome.

The office is on two levels with the only stairs coming up directly from the reception room. The layout included a ton of unused “office” and “utility” space as well as a general dental style treatment area on the second floor. And, of course, the old finishes and fittings didn’t reflect the state-of-the art care he was providing.

Doctor Bailey’s goal was to show his Farmington patients the same love he showed his flagship patients; To tell them, through his office design, what a great job he was going to do taking care of them. He wanted to keep 5 treatment chairs while reconfiguring for and orthodontic semi-private configuration. And the kicker… he wanted to upgrade one chair to a fully private treatment room. But he didn’t want to have to move the doctor’s office or sterilization from the clinic down to the ground floor. With the square footage we had upstairs it was a big ask.

Getting creative and using a square of available space to the left of the stairs, I pointed all the semi-private chairs into corners. I was able to get in some storage cabinetry and make the semi-private chairs feel very private indeed. And…I was able to tuck a private treatment room in across from sterilization. Whew!

We planned for a pull down stair from the ground floor storage room to just outside the doctor’s office so doctor and staff didn’t have to traipse through the reception area to get to the clinic.

Downstairs the new patient room was landlocked without even one window. Patients had to walk around the stairs and storage. We wanted it in the prime real estate of the corner office with two walls of windows and accessible directly from Reception. But we needed to keep access from back-of-house to keep the doctor out of the reception area while he was trying to keep his busy patient days on schedule. The unused “office” space was so large that it allowed us to create a new patient suite. The TC room was large enough for a big family and a scanner and the remaining space became Imaging. Staff and new patients now both had direct access. This also allowed existing patient access for progress imaging and a scanner was available upstairs in the clinic for existing patient scans.

Moving the front desk back as much as possible structurally, reception got larger, which was desperately needed. Staff got a fully functioning staff room taking up the old “operatory” and unused lab. A wide hallway and old cramped utility space became brushing and a photos areas.

The doctor kept the play space he and his wife Nichole, who is an interior designer herself, had tucked under the stairs. With a child sized entrance on one side encouraging younger siblings to come play, we also now had an emergency adult entrance in case of “I don’t wanna go yet” technical difficulties by taking over the storage room off the staff hall. The play space in his flagship office is also a “fort” with the outside designed like a castle turret.

The look of the office was updated to a modern and dynamic black and white with bold pops of color. Nichole was the decision maker as I guided them through the selection process. Unlike most design firms, team efforts are always welcome. Knowing what your vision is helps me make the office yours. I’m not moving in. So reflecting my brand does no one any good. You will live in your office as much or more than your home. Doctor Bailey’s office is one of his best marketing tools so we made sure it reflects his brand and quality of care.