When we did fully NHS work I felt like I was constantly fighting fires with a treadmill of one patient and another patient. That’s draining on people.
Moving to private practice has definitely made my working day a lot calmer and I have the time to do the treatments I need to do. Having time to reflect on things, going back to look at an x-ray and so on. I can email the root canal specialist and speak about the treatment. Not work until half past six in the evening doing paperwork.
Times have changed in financial terms
Practice owners now have a lot more of a financial burden than we used to. When I qualified 20 years ago, a dental nurse or technician didn’t even have to have a qualification. Now they need to be registered and fully trained. Having to pay more highly-qualified staff, increased bills and so on all adds up and made what we were doing financially unsustainable.
Sometimes dentists forget that we should know our worth. When you’re in more of an NHS environment, we can devalue ourselves.
The reality is that it’s not unreasonable to charge someone a fair fee. Looking at the NHS fees I thought no, they weren’t reflective of my skills, my staff’s skills or the nice environment we have created for patients at our practice. Once I flipped that switch in my head, I started to think about the type of dentist I wanted to be, and I couldn’t do that in a system that didn’t value me. When you believe in yourself the rest goes from there.
How we moved from NHS to private dentistry
First I exchanged some emails with a practice management consultant at the BDA, he gave me some advice about how to go about moving to private practice. I also learned about the various rules and regulations in the BDA member advice about moving to private practice in Northern Ireland.
My business partner and I decided to phase in private work gradually, giving patients 12 weeks’ notice when they came in for their NHS appointment. That meant they could have any NHS treatment they needed in those 12 weeks before choosing a private plan, or paying for individual procedures separately.
We had an advisor to help us with the transition, and the first time he came in to the practice there were eight people in the waiting room. Some were emergencies and I was running behind that day. Then he came in a few months later as we were going private and there was only one person in the waiting room. What a difference from the first time! There are still some patients in transition on their three months’ notice, but now I’m seeing a third fewer patients compared to August last year.
Moving to private practice has already improved my work-life balance, even though we haven’t quite finished the transition from NHS yet. There is obviously an extra layer of administration involved in that transition, but I think it will be much better for everyone in the end.
A new style of working
More often now I go home, without feeling exhausted and mentally drained, reflecting on what a nice day I’ve had.
In the past I felt like I was running and running, moving forward appointment times are of a much more comfortable length, reducing the stress of running late. We now see less emergency appointments and if I need to phone patients I have time to do so. Now I look back and I don’t know how I sustained seeing 30 people a day, at times the waiting room was standing room only.
From 2000 NHS patients you might go to 700 on a private plan because you don’t have to see the same volume of patients. The phone is still busy but it’s not crazy any more. It used to be the case that you would put the phone down and it would ring again, with three voicemails you hadn’t managed to pick up.
Now I am actually starting to enjoy my dentistry again.
Members can read more about Rachele's journey in her case study and get up-to-date information about moving to private practice in our advice section.
