It’s (un)complicated!

To make life easier for herself running a multi-chair set-up, Dr Meredith Gay decided to standardise the dental chair systems for every room.

 

By Danny Chan

 

The golden rule when buying into an existing practice is not to introduce too many changes at the start. “Try not to rock the boat” goes the conventional wisdom. Some, like Dr Meredith Gay, however, are not bound by truisms.

 

About three years ago, the NSW dentist reached out to Dr Michael Johns, the principal dentist at (Dr Michael Johns Dental Surgery) to discuss the prospect of buying into his practice.

 

The pair hit it off immediately paving the way for Dr Gay to start as an associate dentist in June of 2019. The plan was that she would begin to establish herself in the long-standing Practice with the intention of buying it.

 

At the time of their meeting, Dr Johns was in the process of looking for a new location to move his Practice to. By mid-way through that year, they had secured a new home for the Practice and the two Dentists found themselves getting ready to relocate from the long standing location.

 

By working together, the Practice was moved to its new location and transition of ownership was finalised on the very day the practice re-opened in its brand new location – with a new name! So much for the golden rule.

 

Howdy Partner!

 

Over the coming years, Dr Gay set out to grow the Practice, increasing it from three to five surgeries. Even as the dentists ushered in the new, they haven’t completely forgotten the old. At least not when it came to their choice of dental chairs.

 

For the expansion, Dr Gay bought two new Swident Partner dental chairs, a DMEGA Teravac 6000 suction motor (for 3-4 chairs), and a Nardi compressor 90L (for 3 chairs) to work with her current set up. She credits Louis Rouessart from LR Dental Services for the buying decision.

 

“Louis was the one who installed the chairs with the initial move and took care of all our equipment maintenance,” says Dr Gay.

 

“I really liked working on the chairs that he installed with the initial move, so we immediately thought of getting his equipment recommendation for the new location.”

 

When it opened in the latter part of 2019, Beaches Dental had two Swident chairs (an old and new unit). Now in 2022 they have 4 Swident Partner chairs and one older Swident EXP1 chair. All the new chairs were purchased from Ampac Dental, an international distributor of large and small European and American supplies as well as equipment.

 

Ampac Dental’s extensive range of global brands includes: MELAG autoclaves, Monitex curing lights, alginate mixers, L&R ultrasonic cleaners, NSK handpieces, DCI spare parts and components. It is also the exclusive Australasian distributor of Swident dental units, Nardi compressors and Dmega suction motors.

 

The expansion brings the floor space to almost 200-sqm and team size to eight dentists and eleven support staff.

 

Fuss-free operation

 

As it stands, Beaches Dental now has five Swident units, four of which are Swident Partner chairs.

 

“To me, a good quality dental chair is up to date, and allows us to provide a lovely patient experience, without necessarily being the most expensive chair on the market,” says Dr Gay.

 

“The nice thing about the Swident chairs is they are not overly complicated. They have a basic design that works really well. They are economical and compact with a small footprint, but have everything you need.

 

“In terms of ergonomics, everything is where you want them to be.”

 

Feature-rich dental units with a complicated user interface do not impress Dr Gay.

 

“When you’ve got a patient in such a chair, sometimes finding the right settings can be rather challenging – especially if you don’t use it as frequently,” she adds.

 

“In our practice, our dentists can move from one room to another depending on the day, so we opted to standardise all the rooms with the same Swident chairs.

 

“You don’t need a lot of experience to operate the chair and use it to its fullest capacity.”

 

Lockdown challenges of new set-up

 

To explain her decision staying with the same chair model and supplier, the recurring word Dr Gay uses is “reliable”. It was used to describe both the workhorse built of the Swident chairs and the technical support teams at Ampac Dental and LR Dental.

 

Recalling the difficulty of setting up the expansion during the COVID lockdown period, she says that Mo and Elizabeth (both from Ampac Dental) made the process easier with their proactive and accommodating ways.

 

“We had the lockdown shortly after we started building in December. Although we had ordered all the equipment by then, we could only take delivery of each unit in stages due to all the restrictions imposed on the builders,” she adds.

 

“Both Mo and Elizabeth were super flexible in the way they organised all the transportation and delivery to accommodate the haphazard building schedules.”

 

“Middle of the road” dental chairs

 

As for the day-to-day functions and regular maintenance of the equipment, Dr Gay is happy to defer to LR Dental’s expertise.

 

“Like many other Dentists, apart from knowing where the switches are to turn them on and off, I don’t know very much about what goes on with my compressors and suction motors,” she says.

 

“For those things I turn to Louis (LR Dental), who works really closely with us, and knows the ins and outs of the equipment. We also get him to regularly maintain all the units and just give them a good regular check-up to help maintain the smooth running of the Practice and equipment.”

 

The reliability of the chair systems also stem from their impeccable installation, courtesy of Louis Rouessart and his team.

 

“One of the things I love about our five chair set-up, is that if we were to have a problem with one of our compressors or suction motors, Louis had set it up in such a way that we can simply flip a lever to the other compressor and suction units to keep all the rooms functional until Louis can fix the problem.”

 

I’ve got no issues

 

Dr Gay calls her Swident units “middle of the road” kind of chairs, meaning they are not too basic or overly complicated.

 

“It’s just a nice good looking, comfortable and user-friendly chair with a good price,” she summarises.

 

“I’ve used a few different chairs in my lifetime. To be honest, I’ve liked a whole lot of them but noticed that many of them – both the new and older units – had reoccurring issues.

 

“But you know, with the Swident Partner, it just doesn’t ever seem to have too much go wrong.”