Your ambitions are to begin your own healthcare practice or to refurbish your existing; we find the number one question amongst our clients is “how much will it cost?” and secondly, “how do I access the funds to make it happen?”.
Keeping your space on-trend with the latest designs and technological advances can aid in bringing in more clients. Not only will it help increase staff retention with an improved workspace, but also increase productivity and positiveness. However, renovating your space or re-locating can be a headache, especially if you’re planning to oversee the whole project yourself, whilst running a business.
“At Interite, our main objective is to make the process seamless and hassle-free for our clients, no matter what their budget and timeframe. Our team is focused on taking care of the whole process from supporting the funding process, initial consult and design, to approvals, build and handover. We ensure the client has all the resources and support to make their project happen”, said Luke Sharpe, Project Consultant.
The simple answer to how much you will need to invest in your medical space is dependent on several factors:
1. Re-location, current location, or start-up business. Assess your business needs and motivations. If you’re simply feeling restless or in need of a change, this can be achieved without all the hassle of bringing in packing boxes. So many things from finishes to the more solid architectural detailing can be addressed in the interior design of your space to meet the need for change without ditching a very decent property in the meantime.
Consider your current location. In our eagerness to move on to the ‘next big thing’, we can forget what drew us to our current location in the first place. Be critical in your assessment. Rate the pros and cons of the exterior, location, interior fitout, leasing arrangement, growth potential and patient demography to remember what works for you where you are. It may be worth continuing to leverage the aspects that already work for you while refurbishing the tired or outdated elements of your healthcare practice.
2. Impact on operations. There are lots of costs to consider and they aren’t all evident from the get-go. Checking your lease carefully to understand any break costs or make good expectations is vital. Remember also that any substantial move will result in downtime and interrupt your service delivery which will impact revenue in the short term, and sometimes even into the future as your past demographic drop off. Then there are subcontractor costs to consider, utilities to re-establish, insurances to reassign and the list goes on.
3. Sustainability versus traditional materials. The use of natural stones and timbers can bring feelings of home into a healthcare space, these can be vital in creating a positive patient experience and they can also be added into a design cost-effectively. Sustainable flooring options can be an expensive addition but worth considering if you have the budget to suit. The use of existing materials, although all good intentions are at hand, can be costly. Working existing furnishings, and designs into a new space can be costly and can have negative implications on the design outcome.
4. Smart finishes. Interior healthcare designers have a huge amount of experience in selecting finishes which not only cover off healthcare design standards but also delight your senses, completely transforming boring or otherwise sterile spaces. The clever use of colour, texture, biophilic influences and appealing materials can make your healthcare facility look like it just stepped out of a glossy magazine, while still retaining all the functionality necessary in a medical space.
5. Space utilisation. Professional interior planners can identify under-utilised spaces a mile away. While you may think your layout ticks all the boxes, a practised eye can immediately spot the optimal way to leverage your current square meterage. What they can come up with may just make you realise how many in-house options you have to play with, removing the need for costly relocation.
6. Tax treatment. “Temporary full expensing” rules for eligible assets, may allow you to claim an immediate tax deduction for expenditure on new assets installed between 6 October 2020 – 30 June 2023. Kevin Duda, Director, Private Business Tax & Advisory at Grant Thornton advised, “you should seek tax advice from your adviser to determine if your proposed expenditure will qualify for an immediate tax deduction”.
Ultimately, although you might ‘just want to move’, successful businesses take stock of their balance sheet and make rational decisions on that basis. Whether you’re a business in the private or public sector there are grants available to you, at different times. We can assist you in navigating funding avenues with grant consultants as well as some of Australia’s major banking institutions.