There are few experiences like that of the dentist walking into a long envisioned new practice. In west Wichita, Kan., a trio of specialists share that experience every day. They also share an address.

Separately, the doctors all envisioned new practices in west Wichita. Together, their visions were able to match up. Patterson Today talked to two of them about the process.

“There’s nothing here in Wichita quite like this,” said Terry Turner, DDS, the owner of Professional Endodontics. “There’s not one location where there are specialists in the same building like this, so that caught my attention from the very beginning. We started to take a closer look at how we could make it happen.”

As specialty practices with unique customer bases, a shared campus was an ideal fit. The idea blossomed and the doctors started working together to identify specifics of building a single structure to house their respective practices. “We saw that there were a lot of cost advantages and convenience advantages,” said Matthew Healy, DDS, of Tiny Teeth Pediatric Dentistry. “We were able to pool our resources better and make a really unique building. We found a location in the fastest–growing area of Wichita. There was a lot of potential to have a good space there.”

The doctors were able to lock down the location. The building process began, and each practice relayed their respective vision to the architects and Patterson design team so they could have separate dream practices under one roof. “We got a lot of advice from people who had been through the process before,” Turner said. “It wasn’t without its issues, but we knew we would be happy with the end result. That rang true for all of us.”

Building a new practice, or completely renovating one for that matter, is most often a process that practices go through on their own. That wasn’t the case in west Wichita. Throughout the planning and construction process, the doctors were able to work with each other, which Healy found invaluable.

“It was neat to just have someone to bounce ideas off of,” Healy said. “Sometimes in dentistry we’re closed off to our own practices and it’s nice to have people to talk to and compare. Even the planning process made you think of things you totally forgot. No one knows dentistry better than the dentist, so it’s great to have other people to help you with things you might forget.”