Two rooms, one chair, and eleven patients
How a practice that started above a pharmacy on Cantonments Road ended up with its own laboratory and six thousand people on its books.
Since 2014
Twelve years on one street
Smile has never moved and never been sold. Everything below happened in the same building on Cantonments Road, mostly in the order it is written.
2014
Two rooms above a pharmacy
Maame Vanderpuye left the restorative department at Korle Bu, borrowed against a house in Dansoman and opened with one chair, one nurse and a second-hand autoclave. The first month's book had eleven names in it.
2016
The second surgery
A second chair went in downstairs, which meant a hygienist could work while a dentist worked. It is the single change that did most for how quickly people are seen, and it is still the reason a scale and polish here is bookable within a fortnight.
2018
Our own laboratory
Sending crowns abroad cost three weeks and a shade that never quite matched. A technician's bench went into the back room instead, and the wait for a crown fell from twenty-one days to four.
2020
The year of emergencies only
For four months the practice saw nothing but pain. It taught us how quickly a slot can be found when it has to be, and the same-day emergency promise on the front of this site is what stayed behind afterwards.
2022
Scanning and planning
An intra-oral scanner and a low-dose OPG unit arrived together. A diagnosis that used to take three appointments now takes one, and every implant since has been planned on a screen before anybody picked up an instrument.
2024
Six thousand people
The books passed six thousand names, more than half of whom arrived because somebody in their family was already a patient. Two of the clinicians who work here now first came through the door as patients themselves.
12
Years on Cantonments Road
6200
Patients on our books
94
%Emergencies seen same-day
What has not changed
The same three promises
A quote that is the price. An appointment long enough to explain itself. And somebody who answers the phone when it is urgent. Everything else about this practice has been rebuilt at least once; those three have not moved since the eleven names in the first month's book.
Get in touch to book your first appointment
One phone call is usually all it takes. Tell us what is bothering you — or that nothing is, and it has simply been a while — and we will find you a time this week.
Contact us
+233 24 618 2290Email us
hello@smile.com.ghWhat happens when you do
We call you back the same working day with two times to choose between.
Your first appointment is forty minutes, and half of it is talking.
GHS 180 for the examination, whatever we find — and a written plan before anything is booked.
NHIS, Nationwide, Acacia and Glico are all settled here directly.
