The Truth About OSHA and HIPAA for Startup Dental Practices
When you’re preparing to open your own dental practice, let’s be honest—compliance probably isn’t the first thing on your mind. You're thinking about patients, your vision, your location, your team. Not binders and acronyms.
But here’s the thing: OSHA and HIPAA aren’t just checkboxes. They’re critical guardrails that, if ignored, can derail your practice before it even gets off the ground.
In this week’s Ideal Practices Podcast, I sit down with compliance strategist Linda Harvey to simplify what every startup owner needs to know. We talk about real-world ways to bake compliance into your practice from day one—without losing focus on your bigger goals.
Startup Compliance: Plan It Early, Build It In
Most doctors default to the path of least resistance: download a checklist, sign a form, shove the binder on a shelf. But that “binder strategy” doesn’t hold up in the real world—especially when it’s your name on the lease, the loan, and the liability.
Instead, design your systems with compliance in mind from the start. That means documenting how your team handles patient data, training for OSHA scenarios, and building real workflows that protect you, your team, and your patients.
Here’s What You’ll Learn in the Episode:
Why a Risk Assessment can expose invisible gaps in your startup plans
The HIPAA basics your IT setup must cover
What most OSHA binders get completely wrong
Whether the latest CDC guidance applies to your new office
The business case for proactive compliance—so you’re not backtracking later
Linda also shares the story of a practice that saw 2,900 patients in 48 hours—and how their team handled compliance without breaking stride. (Yes, really.)
Your Next Step Toward a Confident Startup
Startup ownership is complex enough without guessing your way through compliance. That’s why we built the Startup Practice Blueprint—a proven, step-by-step approach to help you avoid the traps and build your practice the right way.
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Explore the Blueprint and see how we’ve helped over 900 dentists launch with strategy and confidence: idealpractices.com/course