Private versus NHS dental treatment

[Driller]

greygoose said:

Sadly the media focus on stories of three or four millionaire dentists

MacGee!

[cringle]

All that jazz said:

@ the resident dentists here : why do NHS work at all if the pay is so shockingly bad? What's in it for you or is it just a gamble in the hope that you can talk the patient into going on your private books? There's got to be something in it otherwise no dentist would do it. Are we not being shown the full picture here?

Good point. Well firstly, the nation has been spoilt over the years with cheapo NHS dentistry and are primed to pay pennies for their treatment, so "going private" or setting up a private practice is a massive risk. The NHS practices have a never ending stream of patients outside which makes life easy from the point of view that no marketing is required.

The reason I'm still predominantly NHS is that my list is closed, i'm at full capacity with a patient list comprising of very stable patients. If I had to see new NHS patients regularly and treat all their gobrot for £36 minus tax I think I would top myself. My practice also has a very high UDA value which sweetens the pill somewhat, and we do a fair amount of private work as patients are keen to have cosmetic work, implants etc

[R E S T E C P]

I have constant issues with my teeth so have been to lots of dentists.

My existing fillings keep breaking, so a few years ago I decided to go private and find the absolute best dentist I could - to get it sorted once and for all.
Long story short - I was treated by the top/most experienced dentists at the most expensive surgeries I could find in Glasgow & Edinburgh. Every single one fked up.

Dentist 1) Root canal - tooth broke next day. Went back, he said "not his fault" so charged me for repair work... Repair broke 2 weeks later. Ended up getting it fixed when I was visiting family in California, and 5 years later it's still fine...

Dentist 2) Replacement filling. Told dentist she's left it too high and need to file it down. She checked my bite and said it's fine. I said "it's not, it feels completely wrong". She assured me it would feel fine once the anaesthetic wore off. First meal I had - bit down and the filling cracked and split.

Dentist 3) Did x-ray and showed me many fillings and two root canals were needed at a cost of £6,000. I couldn't see the decay he was pointing to on the x-ray, so I asked for a copy of them and went for a second opinion (private) and a third opinion (NHS) - private one said I needed nothing done, NHS one said I only need one small filling.

I went back to an NHS dentist after all of that, and so far it's no worse.
As far as I could see, the only benefit of going private was longer appointment times where the dentist had time to chat to me about work, holidays, etc.

If I was getting another root canal done I'd probably go private to make sure they had enough time to do it properly. But other than that I don't see the point.

[essayer]

Why do we have such a difference in the way dentists are funded compared to doctors?

[Sheepshanks]

^ This. Not sure anyone's complaining about dentists earning too much - it's more, why do we have to pay at all?

[All that jazz]

cringle said:

All that jazz said:

@ the resident dentists here : why do NHS work at all if the pay is so shockingly bad? What's in it for you or is it just a gamble in the hope that you can talk the patient into going on your private books? There's got to be something in it otherwise no dentist would do it. Are we not being shown the full picture here?

Good point. Well firstly, the nation has been spoilt over the years with cheapo NHS dentistry and are primed to pay pennies for their treatment, so "going private" or setting up a private practice is a massive risk. The NHS practices have a never ending stream of patients outside which makes life easy from the point of view that no marketing is required.

The reason I'm still predominantly NHS is that my list is closed, i'm at full capacity with a patient list comprising of very stable patients. If I had to see new NHS patients regularly and treat all their gobrot for £36 minus tax I think I would top myself. My practice also has a very high UDA value which sweetens the pill somewhat, and we do a fair amount of private work as patients are keen to have cosmetic work, implants etc

So are you saying that NHS work is profitable once you've "mentored" your patients into looking after their teeth so they only require a very quick check-up every 12 months and so never have to deal with time-consuming work like root canal treatment?

[croyde]

I went to see two different NHS dentists about a root canal. Both said it was too difficult for them to do.

I went private, cost £800, but job done well and no problems after. I must of been lucky apart from the cost.

[bmwmike]

I've been under full north America dental care (private paid for by employer) private in the UK and now NHS in the UK. Happy with the NHS cover. The north American visits took way too long because they could be paid for each 15mins I was on the chair. Not sure I notice much difference between the NHS and UK private care though it was some time ago.

[cringle]

All that jazz said:

cringle said:

All that jazz said:

@ the resident dentists here : why do NHS work at all if the pay is so shockingly bad? What's in it for you or is it just a gamble in the hope that you can talk the patient into going on your private books? There's got to be something in it otherwise no dentist would do it. Are we not being shown the full picture here?

Good point. Well firstly, the nation has been spoilt over the years with cheapo NHS dentistry and are primed to pay pennies for their treatment, so "going private" or setting up a private practice is a massive risk. The NHS practices have a never ending stream of patients outside which makes life easy from the point of view that no marketing is required.

The reason I'm still predominantly NHS is that my list is closed, i'm at full capacity with a patient list comprising of very stable patients. If I had to see new NHS patients regularly and treat all their gobrot for £36 minus tax I think I would top myself. My practice also has a very high UDA value which sweetens the pill somewhat, and we do a fair amount of private work as patients are keen to have cosmetic work, implants etc

So are you saying that NHS work is profitable once you've "mentored" your patients into looking after their teeth so they only require a very quick check-up every 12 months and so never have to deal with time-consuming work like root canal treatment?

Well being a very established practice, inevitably you will reach a point where you have a list of regular attenders, the bad attenders fall by the wayside over the years, everyone else is schooled and generally one ends up with a pretty stable list. I still do maybe 2-3 nhs root canals a month but yes predominantly check ups. This isn't great for hitting targets though as treatments like crowns carry more weight but my list doesnt need much of this type of work. Not a perfect system but you can make it work

[s p a c e m a n]

Seeing as there is a thread running I may as well ask the question..

Just been quoted £500 for fillings after I broke a couple of teeth, is the white stuff really worth it over the silver stuff as I really couldn't care less about appearance? Think that my dentist used to be a car salesman with the spiel that he was coming out with

[R E S T E C P]

s p a c e m a n said:

Seeing as there is a thread running I may as well ask the question..

Just been quoted £500 for fillings after I broke a couple of teeth, is the white stuff really worth it over the silver stuff as I really couldn't care less about appearance? Think that my dentist used to be a car salesman with the spiel that he was coming out with

I've had one dentist (private, expensive) tell me that for a big, deep filling I should use the silver stuff, because white stuff isn't strong enough for big fillings.
And another dentist (private, expensive) tell me that I should never use the silver stuff for a big/deep filling, because it's stronger than the surrounding tooth, so it could crack your tooth and cause it to split right down to the root which would obviously be very painful. He said white fillings are strong enough, but if anything breaks it will be the filling and not the tooth.

Make of that what you will...

Personally I've only gone for white fillings since then.