Stressless Dental Care, Boston, Lincolnshire

Background

Sunitha has enjoyed an international career in dentistry. She qualified as a dentist 30 years ago in India, where she continued to practice for ten years. From there, Sunitha moved to Saudi Arabia where she worked as a dentist in the hospital for six years before heading to Europe. Sunitha came to England to complete her fellowship in 1996.

She briefly visited Sweden for implantology training in 1998, but is now settled permanently in the UK, in Boston, Lincolnshire.

Today, Sunitha has her own private practice which she runs with her husband, practice manager Sushil Kumar. Together they employ three part-time dental nurses, a part-time hygienist and are currently assisted by a part-time dental student. All this enables the practice to offer evening and Saturday appointments as well as on week days.

The newly built surgery began life as an empty shell which the couple bought in early 2006. The premises gave the couple scope to design the practice themselves. With the help of an architect and a builder, the surgery was ready within five months. It opened in October 2006.

To attract patients to the surgery, Sunitha and Sushil held open days, advertised locally and arranged for leaflets to be posted door to door by the post office.

Solution

As part of this new beginning, the couple decided to bring in DPAS from day one.

Sunitha remembers meeting the DPAS team at an event in London, and was impressed with the payment plans offered, as well as the initial support and efficiency.

“The team at DPAS was very supportive as we started up. The company offered good plans for a new practice. We decided to run a DPAS care plan as well as catering for annual registration fee- per-item clients. We have 150 care plan patients and another 500 or so are with us on annual registration and a fee-per-item basis. Patients appreciate the out of hour emergency service which is part of the cover.”

Benefits

Sunitha is now enjoying DPAS’ efficiency and appreciates the ease with which she can phone and get answers to her questions and solutions to any problems. She says the whole system is working well:

“Basically it’s an effective practice plan, which is tailor-made for our business. We’ve found that we can get in touch with the DPAS team easily with any queries.”

Practice manager Sushil Kumar agrees. He welcomes the additional financial security for the practice, and the flexible and personal service that he can offer patients as a result:

“For us it’s good because we have a guaranteed monthly income and the patients get the best possible care. There’s such a shortage of NHS practices. With us, our patients can walk in and get treatment as soon as possible. We like to think we’re quite accommodating – we like to be available for them anytime, day or night. In fact recently, we had a man who was in terrible pain with toothache. He rang us at 7pm. He was going on holiday very early the next morning. His dentist was 15 miles away. We were closed, but since he lived nearby, we told him to come round and we would help him out.”

With the DPAS plan in place, the couple feels that the practice staff are also well looked after and that the surgery has a relaxed atmosphere. In the mornings, around six or seven cases will be booked in. In the afternoons there will be a further five or six patients. Each one gets plenty of time with the dentist. There are also dedicated breaks and lunch time for the practice team to take a breather and enjoy a cup of coffee.

Sushil is proud of the sense of teamwork that has developed:

“One great advantage in the way we work is that there is time to build up a strong team spirit. Every year we all go to the dental shows for a couple of days. We go as a team. Our staff members are paid well, are comfortable and work in a relaxed environment. We go out for meals together with partners and make it like a family get together. The practice also pays for the staff Christmas meals.”

“We started as a purely private practice and of course there were a few initial teething problems. But mostly I believe that you have to be open minded; think about all your options. Every patient has a different view on which way they want to go. People are confused with the provision of NHS dental and are now realising that there are limitations. They’ve chosen us because we offer them choice…”

To find out more about how DPAS can help smooth your journey from NHS to private practice, or to see how we can make your existing payment plan administration work more efficiently, please contact us.