March 7, 2007 at 10:33 pm by Ian Kerr
Filed under General
Any one who has set up a business from scratch, with no previous business training or experience will know just what an amazing rollercoster ride it can be. The past 24 hours have taken me from an all time low to an “I can see for miles” high with almost no time to catch my breath.
The low came in the usual form of the monthly figures which were horrendous and only set to get worse as the cost of our current expansion will take months to show any return. The high came from an out of the blue phone call asking me to allow photos of my clinical work to be used at an international symposium if Finland next month.
If there is one thing above all else that keeps us going professionally in dentistry it is recognition by our peers for the work that we do. I am delighted to be showing my work and helping to train other dentists and will let you know how it went after the show.
The expansion that I mentioned involves 1 new dentist, 1 new nurse,1 new hygienist, 1 new treatment co-ordinator, 1 new receptionist, 1 new surgery and two new osteopathic treatment rooms. The whole process will take to the end of the year and will involve so much time on the phone to the bank that it doesn’t bear thinking about but will allow us to raise the bar in customer service even higher. I will keep you posted!
March 3, 2007 at 8:31 pm by Ian Kerr
Filed under General, Behind the Headlines
A recent article in The Times (28th February2007) has highlighted yet another problem with the funding under the new contract NHS dental contract. It would seem that several PCTs (Primary Care Trusts, who are the people iin charge of the local funding of NHS care) have used up all of the money and dentists are now over budget for the care of their patients.
The outcome of this predicament is the inevitable situation where patients are facing a month long wait until the April new funding for, sometimes emergency, care. This situation was entirely predictable as almost three quaters of NHS dentists indicated at the start of the contract that they did not feel their was sufficient funding to treat all of their patients. The government was also aware of the situation as they had noted a fall in the revenue from patient charges, following an increase in the number of exempt patients taking up treatment. Amazingly their is talk of a cut in the budget for next year if dentists do not use up all of their allocated payments!
With situations like this arising in the first year of the three year contract it will be interesting to see how many dentists will continue within the NHS after April 2009.