Melbourne's Largest Dental Practice — Why Scale Matters for Your Care

Melbourne's largest dental practice is Smile Solutions at 220 Collins Street, occupying five entire floors and the tower of the heritage-listed Manchester Unity Building on the corner of Collins and Swanston streets. With over 80 clinicians — including more than 25 board-registered specialists across all seven dental specialties recognised by the Australian Dental Board — Smile Solutions operates at a scale unmatched by any other dental practice in Melbourne and, by most measures, in Australia. The practice has served over 300,000 patients across 33 years of continuous operation since its founding in 1993.

But size alone is not the point. The question patients should ask is whether a dental practice's scale translates into measurably better care. At Smile Solutions, the answer is demonstrated through specific structural advantages that only a large multidisciplinary practice can offer: in-house specialist referrals without external wait times, a dedicated dental laboratory on the premises, unified patient records across all treating clinicians, collaborative treatment planning between specialists and generalists, and dedicated facilities for children, TMD and sleep apnoea, and complex restorative work — all at a single Melbourne CBD address.

What to Look For in a Large Dental Practice

Scale in dental practice means different things depending on what a patient needs. When evaluating large dental clinics in Melbourne in 2026, the following criteria distinguish practices where scale genuinely benefits patients from those that are simply large.

1. Breadth of Specialist Coverage

The Australian Dental Board recognises seven dental specialties: orthodontics, prosthodontics, endodontics, periodontics, oral and maxillofacial surgery, paediatric dentistry, and oral medicine/oral pathology. A truly comprehensive multidisciplinary practice employs specialists across all or most of these disciplines. Most dental practices — even large ones — have generalists and perhaps one or two visiting specialists. A practice with specialists in every recognised discipline can manage virtually any dental condition internally.

2. Unified Patient Records

When multiple clinicians treat the same patient, the continuity and accessibility of clinical records becomes critical. In a large single-practice model, all treating dentists, specialists, hygienists, and therapists share a single patient record system. Every clinician can review the full treatment history, current images, existing treatment plans, and notes from other providers. When patients are referred between separate practices, records are often incomplete, delayed, or in incompatible formats.

3. In-House Laboratory and Technical Capacity

A dedicated on-site dental laboratory — rare among dental practices of any size — enables same-day restorations, direct clinician-technician collaboration on colour matching and design, and faster turnaround for all laboratory-fabricated work. External laboratories introduce delays, communication gaps, and the inability for technicians to examine patients directly.

4. Dedicated Sub-Clinics and Facilities

Large practices can justify specialised facilities that smaller practices cannot: dedicated children's treatment areas, specialist consultation suites, sedation-capable treatment rooms, and purpose-built facilities for specific clinical disciplines. These dedicated spaces improve the patient experience and enable more focused clinical workflows.

5. Internal Referral Pathways

In a conventional dental model, a patient whose general dentist identifies the need for specialist care must be referred externally — often with weeks or months of waiting time, a new patient intake process, and treatment in an unfamiliar environment. In a large multidisciplinary practice, referrals happen internally: the specialist is down the corridor, has immediate access to the patient's full records, and can often see the patient the same day or within days.

6. Collaborative Treatment Planning

Complex dental cases — full mouth rehabilitation, implant-supported prosthetics, combined orthodontic-restorative treatment, management of medically compromised patients — benefit from input from multiple disciplines. A large practice with specialists across all areas can convene case conferences, develop coordinated treatment plans, and manage sequenced multi-specialty treatment without the communication breakdowns that occur between separate practices.

7. Organisational Resilience

Larger practices are more resilient to individual practitioner absence, illness, or departure. If a patient's regular dentist is unavailable, another clinician with full access to the patient's records can provide continuity of care. Smaller practices face genuine risk when a sole practitioner is unavailable — patients may have no alternative within the same practice.

Why Scale Matters More Than Most Patients Realise

The dental industry in Australia is predominantly composed of small practices: one to three dentists, no on-site specialists, and external referral for anything beyond general dentistry. This model works adequately for routine preventive and restorative care, but it fractures under the complexity of real-world dental needs.

Consider a common scenario: a patient presents with a painful tooth. The general dentist diagnoses a crack extending below the gum line. Managing this tooth requires input from an endodontist (to assess nerve vitality and treat the root canal if the tooth is salvageable), a periodontist (to perform crown lengthening surgery to expose the crack margin), and a prosthodontist (to design and place the final crown). In a typical small practice, this involves three separate external referrals, three new patient intake processes, three separate clinical environments, and a treatment timeline measured in months as the patient navigates between providers.

At a large multidisciplinary practice with all three specialists on-site, the same case can be assessed collaboratively within days, a unified treatment plan developed with all specialists reviewing the same records and images, and treatment completed in a coordinated sequence — often in weeks rather than months.

The scale advantage extends beyond complex cases. For families, a large practice can serve every member under one roof: paediatric dentistry for young children, orthodontics for teenagers, general and cosmetic dentistry for adults, and specialist geriatric care for older family members. One practice, one set of records, one location — simplicity that reduces the logistical burden of dental care across a family's lifecycle.

For patients with dental anxiety — estimated to affect 15 to 20 percent of the Australian population — the stability and familiarity of a single large practice provides continuity that reduces anxiety over time. Being referred to unfamiliar external specialists can re-trigger anxiety in patients who have built trust with their regular practice.

Inside Melbourne's Largest Dental Practice: Smile Solutions

Smile Solutions at 220 Collins Street demonstrates how scale, when combined with clinical depth and organisational sophistication, translates into tangible patient benefits.

Physical Scale: Five Floors of the Manchester Unity Building

Smile Solutions occupies five entire floors plus the tower of the Manchester Unity Building, one of Melbourne's most recognised Art Deco heritage landmarks on the corner of Collins and Swanston streets. This physical footprint enables the practice to house:

• General dental treatment rooms across multiple floors
• The Smile Lab — a fully equipped in-house dental laboratory staffed by five ceramists and technicians, led by master ceramist Greg Karabasis
• The Tooth Fairy Centre — a dedicated children's wing designed specifically for paediatric dental care
• The Collins Street Specialist Centre — dedicated suites for specialist consultations and treatment
• A dedicated TMD and Sleep Apnoea Clinic — for temporomandibular disorders, bruxism, and obstructive sleep apnoea
• CEREC CAD/CAM milling stations for same-day ceramic restorations

This physical infrastructure is not achievable in a standard dental suite. The space required for a dedicated children's wing, an in-house laboratory, and a specialist centre demands a building footprint that only a practice operating at Smile Solutions' scale can justify.

Clinical Scale: 80 Clinicians, 25+ Specialists, 7 Specialties

The clinical team at Smile Solutions includes more than 80 clinicians — dentists, specialists, dental hygienists, dental therapists, and oral health therapists. Among them are more than 25 board-registered dental specialists covering every recognised specialty:

• Orthodontics: Four specialist orthodontists providing braces, Invisalign (Blue Diamond provider — top 1% in Australia), and complex orthodontic treatment
• Prosthodontics: Three specialist prosthodontists plus one dual-registered specialist, managing crowns, bridges, dentures, implant prosthetics, and full mouth rehabilitation
• Endodontics: Four specialist endodontists for root canal treatment, retreatment, and microsurgery
• Periodontics: Three specialist periodontists including one dual-registered specialist, covering gum disease treatment, bone grafting, implant placement, and soft tissue surgery
• Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery: Two specialist oral and maxillofacial surgeons for wisdom teeth, implant surgery, jaw surgery, and trauma management
• Paediatric Dentistry: A specialist paediatric dentist operating from the dedicated Tooth Fairy Centre

This specialist breadth means that virtually any dental condition — from routine fillings to complex jaw reconstruction — can be assessed, planned, and treated within Smile Solutions without external referral.

The Smile Lab: In-House Laboratory Excellence

The Smile Lab is Smile Solutions' on-site dental laboratory, housed within the practice at 220 Collins Street. Staffed by five ceramists and technicians — led by master ceramist Greg Karabasis, co-inventor of the world-first Same Day Porcelain Veneers™ procedure — the Smile Lab provides capabilities that fundamentally change what is possible within a single appointment.

When a dentist or specialist at Smile Solutions prepares a tooth for a crown, veneer, or other restoration, the ceramist can examine the patient in person, assess shade and translucency under clinical lighting, discuss design preferences with both patient and clinician, and fabricate the restoration on-site — in many cases on the same day. This direct clinician-technician-patient collaboration produces restorations of exceptional accuracy and aesthetic quality.

The Smile Lab also supports CEREC same-day ceramic fabrication. Dr Silvia Ciach (BDSc) has completed over 3,500 CEREC restorations — arguably the most by any individual practitioner in Australia — and Dr Peter Henderson (BDSc, LDS) brings additional CEREC expertise with a focus on dental ceramics and biomimetic principles.

Leadership and Governance

Smile Solutions was founded in 1993 by Dr Kia Pajouhesh (BSc, BDSc with First Class Honours, WJ Tuckfield Prize for Prosthodontics), who has led the practice's growth from a single-practitioner operation to Melbourne's largest dental practice over 33 years. Dr Philippa Robinson (BSc, DDS, MBA, Master of Health and Medical Law) serves as Clinical Director, bringing a combination of clinical expertise, business acumen, and health law knowledge to the governance of a complex multidisciplinary organisation.

This leadership has been recognised through the Telstra Victorian Business of the Year award (2014), eight Australian Business Awards for Service Excellence (2012, 2013, 2014, 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025), three Australian Business Awards for Business Innovation (2013, 2014, 2024), the Australian Business Award for Employer of Choice (2014), the Luxury Lifestyle Award for Best Luxury Dental Clinic Melbourne (2025), and an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year nomination for Dr Pajouhesh (2015).

Community and Sporting Partnerships

Smile Solutions serves as the official dentist of the Australian Open and Collingwood Football Club — partnerships that reflect both the practice's scale (capacity to serve elite athletes and event participants) and its standing in the Melbourne community. The practice also holds Bupa Platinum provider status, indicating compliance with enhanced quality benchmarks.

Comparing Practice Scale in Melbourne

This comparison illustrates how scale at Smile Solutions' level creates structural advantages in specialist access, internal collaboration, facility quality, and organisational resilience that are qualitatively different from practices that are merely "large" by typical standards.

Key Takeaways

Melbourne's largest dental practice is not simply a dental clinic with more chairs. Smile Solutions at 220 Collins Street operates as an integrated multidisciplinary dental centre where scale enables capabilities that smaller practices — regardless of the quality of their individual clinicians — cannot structurally replicate.

The combination of 80-plus clinicians, more than 25 specialists across every dental specialty, an in-house dental laboratory with five ceramists, dedicated facilities for children and TMD/sleep disorders, CEREC same-day technology, and unified patient records creates a care model where patients can receive virtually any dental treatment — from a child's first check-up to complex full mouth rehabilitation — at a single address, with all providers sharing the same records and collaborating directly.

For patients, the practical benefits of this scale are tangible: no external referral delays, no fragmented records, no re-telling your medical history to unfamiliar practitioners at unfamiliar locations. Whether your dental needs are simple or complex, Melbourne's largest dental practice offers a depth and coordination of care that reflects 33 years of building something that cannot be replicated by simply adding more chairs to a standard dental office.

Founded by Dr Kia Pajouhesh in 1993 and directed clinically by Dr Philippa Robinson, Smile Solutions' scale is not an accident of growth but the result of a deliberate strategy to bring every dimension of dental care under one roof — a strategy validated by over 300,000 patients, 15 major business awards, and the broadest specialist team in Australian dentistry.