A dental office is really a dental hospital. Like regular hospitals, there are two main types: privately owned and government funded. Privately owned dental offices can be run by a corporation, a non-dentist (in some States), or in most cases by a dentist or a group of dentists. A dental office can be either a general practice or one of the many American Dental Association (ADA) recognized dental specialties: Orthodontics, Oral Maxilofacial Surgery, Periodontics, Endodontics, Pedodontics, Prosthodontics, and Community Dentistry.
A privately owned dental office can be either started from scratch or purchased ready to go from another dentist. Starting a new dental office from scratch can be very challenging and risky because the initial expense needed to set-up a functioning dental hospital can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. This on top of the typical debt of over one hundred thousand dollars to pay for a dental education severely limits the number of new dentists getting out of school opening a new dental practice. Not only are you sunk deeper into debt, but you start off without any patients. A better and safer way for a dentist to acquire a dental office is to purchase an existing office with an established patient base and income flow. Purchasing an existing dental practice with a proven track record is not without its own challenges and risks.
The main asset of an existing dental practice is undoubtly the dental charts. The equipment may be old and outdated, but if you don't have well documented, legable, organized patient charts, you will have trouble running the practice. Dental offices with well documented and legible dental charts are hard to find. Most hand written charts are full of abbreviations and illegible chicken scratches. Only the most sophisticated computerized dental offices will have type written dental charts.

Another important consideration to the life-line of a dental office is location. In a small town everyone will know where the dental office is located. In a large city this is quite a different matter. Advertising expenses can help, but is usually very expensive.

Dental insurance can either make you or break you depending on which ones you accept. Some dental insurance products reimburse well and some will not. Some pay so poorly it can actually clog the books and seriously undermine the office's cash flow. If you accept insurance as your main source of income, the insurance company's fee will dictate you profit margin, which will directly effect how much you can invest back into your business for employee salaries, benefits and newer technology. Most clinic that accept cheap insurance plans move patients through like cattle. High volume and low quality. You may not even see the same dentist twice. Higher end dental offices can be more expensive, but usually have a reputation to uphold and provide a much more comfortable environment.

Dental office ambience can vary widely. Every one has heard of the dental office with no windows. Or the window that looks out into the parking lot. This is a very important consideration when it comes to nervous patient that are in pain. Instead of staring at a Snoopy poster on the wall, some dental offices have created gardens with aviaries and water features to distract patients thought. Some look out over the water, and some have self contain visual stimuli like fish tanks. When no other options are available, television, movies, or video games can help. Placing the TV right over the patients head is a nice touch and usually is God's gift to the dental staff when children are involved.

A dental office with a nice reception area is a real bonus. It can set the stage for a more relaxing visit and give the patients companion an alternative retreat. It should have plenty of up to date reading material for every type of person. It should have a separate restroom so you can enter and leave without being seen. A water fountains work well and can be a require facility in many newer buildings. Some dental office actually have refreshment such as cookies and bottle juices and water. Such juice bars are often raided by a few greedy patients and exploited by the sneaky staff. Frequent spills can cause sticky carpet and chairs and can attract roaches and ants.

A dental office can be generalized into either old fashion or modern. Most old fashion dental offices have older equipment and smell like a dental office. The have old style dental film that have to developed and fixed with harsh chemical, and could even still have cuspidors next to the dental chair to rinse and spit into periodically throughout the dental procedure. More modern office have invested heavily into technology. Digital radiographs, electric drills, computerized charts, intraoral photography, microscopes, lasers, and computer designed crowns are just some of the modern technological advances dentistry has to offer patient today.