Samira Salbi of the 2020dentistry.com forum and Derek Pearson of Dental Practice Journal been looking at the NHS dentalpilots and drawing some strong conclusions.

DENTISTS are trained to be clinicians not business managers. Sometimes we forget that. They are healthcare specialists who understand the importance of oral health and work hard to ensure their patients enjoy the vital pleasures of eating, smiling and speaking. Sometimes they have to restore and repair damaged or carious teeth, sometimes they have to replace teeth that are too bad to save, and understand the changing needs of the population. It is a role that is becoming seen as increasingly important for the nation’s systemic health. For some spending their work time chairside with patients is all they have to do and their job/life balance is probably in good order. Others finish their treatments and then have to spend precious home time sorting out financial and management matters, and deal with all the regulatory bodies to which they must answer. Wouldn’t it make more sense to let someone else sort out all the paperwork during the working day so the evenings become free for leisure and family? It would seem to be the obvious answer. But let’s open out the discussion and posit that it might also be an idea to let someone else deal with the GDC, the CQC and whoever is the commissioning body du jour. Why not? While we’re looking at things dental there seems to be a problem with creating a working model for the new NHS contract. There is a whole gamut of pilots going on at present and Professor Steele says he wants to move on to prototyping more defined contract models, but we seem no closer to a date when the new contract might be introduced. Finally, new contract commissioning seems to have been tentatively pushed back to 2018 and dentists are losing patience with the whole procedure. The golden future that will see the end of UDAs is too far away to be seriously hoped for and NHS dentists wearily climb back on the treadmill. There may be an answer to all these situations, the paperwork, the regulators and the new contract – and that answer is corporate dentistry. The corporates are experienced and strong enough to have a voice that can be heard and can act as the principal contractors and providers for NHS dental services. Instead of having to deal with thousands of contracted practices, by handing the job of NHS dentistry to the corporates, the NHS will only have to deal with a dozen or so providers, who will be accountable to the NHS, and saving a lot of money in the process. Corporates will deal with the business side of the practice freeing up the dentists to deliver effective dental care, and in a way can also act as a self regulator by making commitments to the NHS new dental care model, how their practices will be run, and how dental care professionals will practice. The corporate providers will be accountable to the regulatory bodies who will deal directly with corporate head offices making its job easier. It may not be a popular idea but it could work.

What do you think? Have your say, your blogs and comments are important. This is posted as a joint blog on www.2020Dentistry.com and will be published in the Dec issue of Dental Practice Journal. e-mail the editor, derek@aemorgan.co.uk