Mobile Dental Clinics
What is a Mobile Dental Clinic?
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| What is a Mobile Dental Clinic? |
Mobile Dental Clinic Design
Mobile dental clinics can exist in many sizes, platforms, designs, and, of course, costs. Different dental business models have different staffing and serve different communities. The smallest, fastest way to get around town with little to no set-up time, and also, the most affordable investment in a mobile dental clinic would be a sprinter van. A mobile dental clinic designed for maximum effectiveness should be equipped with a dental chair, an intraoral X-ray, a central sterilization area, a panoramic x-ray, and central suction and compressed air systems.
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| Mobile Dental Clinic Design by Odulair |
How many employees does a Mobile Dental Clinic have?
How many employees does a Mobile Dental Clinic will need it will depend on the size of your clinic. While the length of mobile clinics can vary a lot, the width is limited to the legal size of vehicles on the road, shipping protocols. That to say that the longest you'll ever go on a mobile clinic will be around 53 ft, and to travel, it needs to be at the most 8.5 ft (external dimension). Because mobile clinics are to be mobile and ready for a variety of settings, climates, and temperatures, the inside width gets further reduced since it needs insulation to keep the unit comfortable and occupiable, framing, and medical-grade inside wall surfaces. If it's a trailer for example and it needs to be shipped internationally, the logistics of shipping it will dictate that the trailer needs to fit inside a shipping container, which by itself has standard sizes of height and width.
So, let's see, in a Mobile Dental Clinic built inside a Sprinter van, there's space for 1 dental practitioner. A 20 ft space is slightly larger than the internal space of a Sprinter van, and it can be manufactured as a dental kiosk built on a shipping container, a box-truck, an RV type bus, or a trailer platform, and at the most, you can have two dental chairs (very tight), better off with one chair only. At 24 ft you are now with enough space to have two chairs, which you can staff with one dentist and one hygienist, or a combination of the two. Three chairs? Now you are looking at vehicles, trailers, or shipping containers that can provide between 32 ft and 40 ft.
Do remember that in a dental clinic there needs to be space for the equipment that is visible to anyone like that dental chair operatory, space to move around, space for cabinetry, and also, the machinery one doesn't see, hidden away in a mechanical room (where the compressor needed to run the dental chair and powered tools are hidden), water tanks, dirty water tanks, power panel, and more.
How much does a Dental Mobile Clinic weigh?
Weight is important in a mobile clinic because 26,000 pounds of weight is the legal limit before by law it's required a commercial driver's license to operate the vehicle with the clinic. While large organizations often have dedicated staff to operate and maintain the clinics, many do not, so making sure you don't cross those 26,000 pounds of weight is very important. With that, the larger you get in length, the fastest you'll go beyond that weight limit.
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| Mobile Dental Clinic Sprinter Van by Odulair |
Do mobile dental clinics have to have a mailing address?
Yes. In some states in fact you will not be able to operate a mobile clinic without considering the mobile clinic as a satellite facility to the brick-and-mortar fixed address.
Mobile Dental Clinic business plan
Mobile Dental Outreach programs and mobile dental clinic operations including dental businesses and nonprofit dental care organizations can greatly benefit from the accumulated experience of Odulair in the Mobile Dental Clinics arena. Odulair has designed and manufactured Mobile Dental Clinics for some of the largest mobile dental programs in the world, all the way from Los Angeles, California, to Ghana, in West Africa.
Mobile Dentistry can be performed in a variety of vehicles including mobile dental vans, mobile dental trucks, mobile dental trailers, and ISO containers. An Odulair representative can help you determine which one works best for you.
