18 years of Rident: Founder Željko Miljanić, DMD on growth and development

Where did the idea for the development and expansion of the Polyclinic come from? What was the mission? Is it still the same?

Back in 1988, as a young doctor of dentistry, I applied for my first trainee position at the Poreč Health Center, but at that time I never dreamed that one day I would found and manage one of the largest private dental center in Europe, which treats up to 60,000 patients annually.

In 1991, I founded my own dental practice in Rijeka, and in 1995 I became a co-founder of Poliklinika Medico, then the first private polyclinic in Croatia. After a number of years of training in the profession, with my partners, I decided to separate the dental part of the polyclinic, and in 2003 we founded the Rident Polyclinic, which began operating on October 18, 2004. Our mission was and remains to provide comprehensive dental services in one location.

What were the main challenges when opening a polyclinic like Rident?

Partner relations and development strategy are always the basic challenges of business cooperation. It is always most important to have a plan for how to proceed when you outgrow the scope of business in any segment. Therefore, due to the increase in the volume of work, we opened a branch in Poreč in 2013.

What is the main advantage of Rident? What distinguishes it from the competition in Italy and Croatia?

The advantage is certainly the size of the polyclinic, which means the number of employees and the comprehensiveness of the dental service in one location. However, what distinguishes us from the competition or what is the secret of success is all the employees who work here as a team. Every pore of our company, every employee, breathes with Rident as if it were his and that is our greatest value. We are all involved as one family company, and at the same time we are extremely large.

When should you single out a period of great growth during all the years of activity, which would it be?

For me personally, it was the transition from the doctor’s office and the establishment of the Rident Polyclinic in 2003, and after that all growth was proportional to the needs of our patients and the profession itself.

A big leap and challenge for Rident was the opening of a branch in Poreč in 2013, which further expanded our operations in the region, and in terms of the number of employees and the number of patients, we became the largest dental polyclinic in the region.

Which dental service at Rident makes you particularly proud?

In the past ten years, dental medicine has rapidly exploded in progress. Digitization is the biggest leap that happened – everything that was done by human hands before is now done by computers, CAD-CAM machines and 3D printers. As a rule, the patient with us sees the entire course of therapy before we start the work, so patients know in advance what they can expect from the procedure itself to the final work. Here, there are no negative surprises and bringing the finished act to the fore, here planning facilitates communication with the patient, because we show him in advance what we intend to do and the patient knows how it will look in the end. Communication with dental technicians is digitally more precise, instructions are clearer and there are no assumptions, which is a very important thing for large works. We draw in 3D programs and print with 3D printers, and we show the patient directly on her/him how the work will look. So, as far as the profession itself is concerned, we no longer have any special wishes, our equipment is always in accordance with the highest standards of the profession, as well as the techniques we use, because our employees are continuously educated and follow the trends in dental medicine. The most important thing for us is an individual approach to each patient, and we can really offer them all possible and existing solutions for their new smiles.

What are the next steps and challenges to be faced?

Since June of this year, we have been part of the largest dental group in the region, Adria Dental Group, and with them we will continue to develop some of the projects that we have been preparing in recent years.

The dental laboratory Ridental, which decided to combine its three locations into one, and started investing in a new office building in Žegoti on Kastav, has an advantage here. During the pandemic, we stopped the investment, but now it’s time to proceed with the implementation, because after the project is finished, Ridental will be the largest dental laboratory in the region.