We are opening a second location and want one shared schedule. What does that take?

The requirement sounds simple and it drives almost every other decision, so it is the right question to start with.

One shared schedule means one database. The options:

• The cloud version of your practice software, if it has one. Cleanest answer. Both offices connect to the same hosted system, nothing depends on one building's server being up, and adding a third location later is trivial. The tradeoffs are that you are dependent on your internet connection at each site, so that connection needs to be decent and ideally have a backup, and the migration from your on premise version is a real project.
• Hosting your existing system where both sites connect to it. Either a connection between the two offices or a hosted desktop environment. This works well and it does mean one location's internet, or one server, becomes a dependency for both. Acceptable if built with that in mind.
• Two separate databases. Sometimes chosen because it seems simpler. It is not. You get duplicate patients, no shared schedule, reporting that has to be manually combined, and a merge project later that is worse than doing it right now. We would talk you out of this.

The things to do early, in the order they bite: order the internet at the new site as soon as the lease is signed, because four to eight weeks is normal and it is the only thing that cannot be rushed; get cabling and access points in before the cabinetry and chairs go in, because running cable through a finished operatory is a different job entirely; and decide the practice software question above before you buy hardware, because the answer changes what you need at the new site.

Also worth planning: your staff will float between offices, so they need one login that works at both, and your phones should present as one practice rather than two numbers with separate voicemail. Both are easy if decided early and awkward if retrofitted.

Call us at lease signing rather than at buildout. The cheap version of this project and the expensive version are separated mostly by timing.