Plan To Fail?

When a piece of equipment in your dental office breaks down, is there a mad scramble to find somebody to repair it right away? Does your office basically close when one compressor head dies? If your Statim quits, do you have another way to sterilize instruments? For far too many offices the answer to these questions is No, which is a sign that you may not be running your office as efficiently as you think.

What those questions indicate is that you are running at maximum capacity with your equipment and can’t run your office if anything goes wrong. Air compressors and suction machines with multiple motors are intended to provide a backup motor so that your office can keep running when one fails.

However, far too many dentists buy dental equipment too small for their actual needs. Then, when a breakdown does occur, rather than running at a slightly reduced capacity, production basically stops.

This problem is also quite common with sterilizers. Dental offices love the speed and convenience of the Statim 2000, but rely on it too much. When it breaks down, the office is left with nothing.

The solution is to plan for the eventuality that your equipment will fail. Choose one morning during your work week to shut off one suction motor, or one compressor head.

How does your dental office work? You should aim to have decent, though not spectacular suction, and you should have no problems with your air supply (though you should notice the compressor running more often). A failure in either of these tests indicates that you need to start budgeting for larger mechanical room equipment.

Don’t put the sterilizer to a test – just buy a second. I’ve talked about sterilizers before, and I recommend looking through some old posts for tips on choosing a second machine. The rule of thumb is that every dental office should have one small, fast sterilizer and one large chamber style sterilizer. If either fails, you can rely on the second.

A little bit of planning and forethought will save you much frustration when things eventually go awry.