How long did it take to set up the squat practice and what was the most difficult part?
MC: Finding the perfect location was one of the most important aspects when setting up the practice. I live in Maidstone so was looking for something local and when we found the property everything just clicked into place. There is a Waitrose and a small shopping centre with a car park which creates a passing footfall. In many ways it is the perfect location. Once we had agreed the site there was still a lot of hard work involved. We were sitting in brick dust and paint pots just trying to get the project off the ground. Alongside the builders, my family were involved with the decorating and even constructing the reception bar and many other fixtures and fittings. Our friends and team helped out too. It took about three and a half months to get everything up to speed and compliant with all the regulations.
How big is the practice and what services do you offer?
MC: We are now a team of 10, after taking on a second hygienist in September. We have another hygienist who is also a therapist, an oral health educator, two receptionists, two nurses with a head nurse, a part-time associate and my clinical manager, Leigh, who does all the administration and then there’s me. It’s a nice size, we hope, in the next few months, to have yet another dentist to work part time. We would then take on another nurse, but I think having 12 would be the maximum, as we never want to lose that personal touch. When we set up the practice we wanted to create a relaxed atmosphere, where patients are treated as human beings and not just a number, with all our staff adopting the same friendly manner.
How did you go about building up your presence within the community?
MC: Awareness began before the doors even opened. During the build we generated a bit of interest as people came over to ask what we were doing. We have had a lot of help from our patients recommending their friends and family to us. From the start we have been caring towards our patients and it seems to have worked. We have carried out two or three leaflet drops and an ex-marketing director, a patient of ours, helped us direct our advertising (we have an ongoing campaign with Yell.com) and of course the passing footfall. We have also undertaken other projects. I have always had a strong belief in oral health education and we have gone into two local primary schools to give oral health education lectures already, I am hopeful these will become annual events. I think most of our growth can be put down to word of mouth. When we opened, we were trying to offer something different to the other dental practices in the area, and we focus on the attention to detail and a caring attitude. I think we are slowly succeeding; we now have nearly 1,400 patients, with almost 1,000 of those on our DPAS payment plan.
The use of social media has grown substantially in recent years, do you have an online presence?
MC: We are on Facebook with a commercial Facebook page, and we have links to all our social media through our main website. We update the Facebook page at least once a week with what is going on at the practice. Dental Focus, built our web page, they were absolutely brilliant and managed to sort out our needs very quickly. The website I think speaks for itself, it looks fantastic. It took a little over four months, but it was worth waiting for, it is very impressive and a very good projection of what we are trying to achieve. We wanted something contemporary, yet caring which also conveyed our ethos. We plan to keep revising our website to attract new patients, I think if you’re not constantly being innovative and moving forward then you’re going backwards.
The name Identics – where did it come from and what does it mean?
MC: We scratched round for a name for a long time, and the prefix ‘i’ is very much of the present moment, very current. The ‘dent’ obviously represents dentistry, but we didn’t feel it was complete as just ‘ident’, the final syllable gives the name a much better ring to it. The term identics is now our brand. We then sat down and worked out our colour scheme, particularly with the colour orange, which was Leigh’s inspiration and the theme runs throughout the whole practice with splashes of orange here and there. It just worked when we put it all together. Identics represents to us our guiding principles. We are a preventative based practice where we help patients to learn the best oral care routine to minimise the need for treatment. We are proud to offer the highest standard of care that we ourselves would expect to receive and want patients to be happy during the time they spend with us. In a calm, relaxed atmosphere we will help and fully involve patients to make an informed choice for their treatment needs. We focus on the patient journey. We spend time with a patient, and that is something that is missing in many practices and perhaps may not be possible in the NHS.
Did you always intend to be a private practice?
MC: When we first started we did make enquiries into getting an NHS contract but were told there was no NHS money - there are two local practices around a mile away which both have NHS contracts already. So we just started from scratch and decided to be private and offer something different. We offer time and a chance for people to talk about their problems. We involve everyone in the team, and when we are working together, we are a triangle (dentist, patient, nurse). We discuss everything in the surgery, where we involve the patient with all the processes before we go ahead with any treatment. Once we had decided to go private, we began looking at plan providers, and at a BDTA Showcase we spoke to DPAS who gave us some good advice on things like wording the practice programme and we took it from there really. The personal service we receive is great but most importantly having invested in the Identics brand we like the idea that patients are on our plan and we have that level of individuality.
What does the future hold for you and for Identics?
MC: The idea that a brand is expandable is very seductive, although I feel this is a conflicting response as I am very mindful that we never want to adopt a corporate ethos here. If you have one practice, you can concentrate on what you are trying to achieve. When you have two practices you are diluting everything by 50 per cent, the whole ethos and ideals just fritter away really. I’d like to concentrate on just making this work, and make it right. From a business point of view it would be great to expand, but from an ethical point of view I think we should keep it as it is.