A conference room and staff lounge on the second level look out over the river, and at 6,000 square feet, the building contains six finished and four unfinished operatories, which will allow Watkins to expand his practice through a partner or rental to other dentists.

The entire office is designed to put patients at ease, especially in the operatories. "We wanted to continue the relaxing theme with the high-end A-dec chairs," Watkins said.

An A-dec Educational Experience trip to the company's headquarters in Oregon with John Link and branch manager Tom VanAntwerp helped Watkins, and his wife and office manager, Jenny Watkins, choose the right dental chairs to outfit the "lodge."

"Looking at the quality, and the way they build things, and it's an American company, we decided to go ahead and have A-dec build all of our equipment - cabinets and chairs," Watkins said. "We decided that we'd go with what we consider the best equipment with the best track record to avoid future problems."

To get the maximum efficiency out of his A-dec purchase, Watkins decided to include two entries into each operatory and extra-wide hallways to make it easy for staff to move around the cherry-finish cabinets. Always looking for ways to increase his clients' productivity, John Link helped design a unique solution: "We built [Watkins'] lights and his monitors into his dispensing units," he said. "Normally they're wall-mounted. You have the light mounted on the wall and then you have the dispensing unit, which has the gloves, cups and towels on it. In this case, we combined them. It's the first office that we did that way, and it turned out really nice."

Patients can use the monitors to surf the Internet and watch TV during treatment, and staff can use them for viewing images and treatment plan education.

In the old location, the operatories were computerized and could run Schick intraoral digital X-ray sensors, but they weren't used at full capacity. Watkins decided to switch to Eaglesoft - with its intuitive sense, full integration and customized schedules and charting - to optimize his practice's digital technology. He also incorporated the GALILEOS with the CEREC the practice already used.

"We had already been a CEREC practice and stuck with the upgrades consistently," Watkins said, but the new building allowed him to get more out of his equipment. "The GALILEOS integrated really well with the CEREC. We wanted to expand our ability to do implant, third-molar and impaction surgeries, which we do a lot of, with better accuracy. Those two pieces of equipment integrate really well for what our future goals are."