There’s no shortage of advice on opening a squat practice. Write a business plan, find the right location, register with the CQC, line up your funding – you know the checklist. The trouble is that most of it stops at the surface level ideas, and skips the part where reality turns up.
We design, build and fit out new practices for a living, so we see those things up close.
Here some insights on what no one telsl you about opening a squat dental practice:
A squat earns nothing on the day you open
Buy an existing practice and you inherit a diary that’s already full. Open a squat and you inherit an empty one. Patients don’t appear the moment the sign goes up – they trickle in over months, as word gets round and your marketing starts to land. That gap between opening day and breaking even is the most underestimated part of any new dental practice set-up.
You’ll need enough working capital to cover rent, wages, equipment finance and your own living costs through a stretch where the practice isn’t yet paying for itself. A realistic budget plans for that quiet opening period, not just the build and the kit. Work the figure out properly and add some breathing room, because the climb almost always takes longer than the forecast says it will.
Why funding a squat is harder
Banks know all this, which is why they lend more cautiously against a squat than an established practice. A going concern comes with years of accounts; a squat comes with your CV and a projection. Expect to put more of your own money in, and expect harder questions.
None of it is a reason to walk away, squats get funded all the time, but the numbers are tighter than the glossy version admits. If the budget is where you’re stuck, our guide to what influences the cost of a dental practice is a sensible place to start.
Location: the one decision you can’t undo
You can change almost anything about a practice after it opens: the branding, the team, the price list, even the internal layout. The building you can’t. Move premises and you’re starting over.
So this is the call worth losing sleep over, not the shade of the reception sofa. Look hard at local demographics, the competition nearby, parking, transport links and how visible you are from the road. A unit down a quiet side street keeps costing you in marketing spend for years.
Design your squat practice for where it’s heading
Nearly every squat opens as a single surgery and grows into the space as the patient base builds. The mistake, and it’s a common one, is designing a new dental practice set-up around opening week rather than where you want to be in five years. If any part of a squat dental practice design guide is worth dwelling on, it’s this one.
The plumbing, drainage, electrics and plant capacity for your second and third surgery are far cheaper to put in while the walls are open than to retrofit later, once you’re trading and can’t take a room out of action without losing income. Sizing the compressor and suction for where you’re headed, running the pipework and data cabling now, leaving the right services capped behind a wall, none of it is glamorous, and all of it spares you a brutal refit down the line.
Sequence beats shopping list
Most of the costly squat mistakes aren’t about which chair or scanner you pick. They’re about the order you do things in. Your treatment centre dictates the plumbing and electrics around it, so settle on it before the room is designed, not after.
Decide your X-ray equipment early, because the room may need shielding built into the wall. Specify suction and compressors before the building work is signed off – the plant room is one of the easiest things to get wrong and one of the most disruptive to put right. No need to start from a blank page: our essential dental practice equipment list runs through what to plan for and when.
The hidden cost of being your own project manager
Hiring the builder, plumber, electrician, joiner and equipment supplier separately looks like the cheaper route. It rarely is. Every handover between trades is a gap where dates slip and things don’t quite meet in the middle, cabinetry that won’t fit the chair, drainage in the wrong spot, an install date that moves because the room isn’t ready. One team handling the design and the build together closes those gaps, which is much of the point of a turnkey approach.
Compliance runs on its own clock
You can’t open a squat until you’re registered with the CQC, and registration takes longer than most people allow for.
It helps to split it in two: everything up to the registration interview, and everything after, launch, marketing and the day-to-day running of the place.
The build feeds straight into that timeline. A decontamination room that isn’t properly zoned, surfaces that don’t meet the standard, ventilation or X-ray shielding that wasn’t designed in – any of these can stall registration and push your opening date back.
Getting it right the first time costs far less than fixing it against the clock; our decontamination room design guide covers what inspectors expect to see.
The soft stuff decides whether a squat flies
The build and the kit get all the attention. The things that actually decide whether a new practice takes off tend to get squeezed in right at the end.
Start marketing before you open
The instinct is to start marketing once the doors are open. By then you’re behind. Begin around six months out so you open to a waiting list rather than an empty diary, unless someone’s in real pain, most people are happy to wait for a new practice they like the look of. A decent website, local search, a bit of active social and an opening offer do most of the early heavy lifting.
Lastly, you can’t do this alone
The lone dentist building an empire single-handed makes for a nice story and a poor plan. Bring a practice manager in earlier than feels comfortable, find an accountant who actually knows dentistry, and lean on suppliers and a fit-out partner who’s done it before. And talk to dentists who’ve opened their own squat – most are surprisingly candid about what they’d change.
Plan your squat practice with Turnkey Dental
At Turnkey Dental, we design, build and equip squat practices across the UK – from the first CAD drawings to the day you switch the lights on. We’re a family-run business with over 52 years of combined experience, and we’ve fitted out enough new practices to know where the pitfalls sit and how to design around them from the start.
We back the equipment for the long term, too: every NEOdent treatment centre we install comes with a market-leading 10-year parts and labour warranty, so the biggest single investment in your surgery is protected for a decade.
Take a look at our squat practice service and a few of our previous projects for a sense of what’s possible, or get in touch to talk through your plans. The earlier we’re involved, the more we can save you.