If the essence of a practice’s success is a team approach, then Moor Park Special Dental Centre exemplifies this ethos by offering seven specialities in one location. Its website boasts “a full complement of multi-disciplinary specialist care to rival the best teams around the world”, and as winner of
Private Dentistry’s Best Endodontic Practice of the Year, it seems that confidence is justified.
As a specialist team under one roof, clinicians are on hand and opinions can be given immediately, without patients having to go elsewhere. It also reduces possible costs to the centre with specialist opinions on tap. It’s a win-win scenario.
Sarah Jones is the referral liaison and course co-ordinator and is the ‘front face’ of the centre. She ensures referring dentists are happy with the service provided and keeps them up to date with what the centre offers, including its popular study groups and tailor-made training programmes.
She explains: “We have an amazing team who have assigned job roles that complement each other. All our clinicians attend monthly multidisciplinary meetings where we discuss both clinical cases and practice issues.
“Our emphasis concentrates on our referral base, as that is what generates our patients. Once treatment is complete, our patients are referred back to the referring dentist. We have approximately 250 core regular referrers.”
Patient care
The centre prides itself on an ethos that embraces the concept of being a ‘patient’s’ dental practice rather than ‘their’ dental practice. Sarah says: “As the practice has grown and evolved, our duty of care remains at the forefront of our ethos.
“We pride ourselves in giving our patients a positive, reassuring journey from their first point of contact. We always aim to meet and, where possible, exceed our patients’ needs and expectations.”
The front desk is a ‘highly trained team’ in customer care and every patient is given a personalised welcome pack explaining proposed treatment, their consultation visit and details of the clinician for that appointment.
For patients who have undergone surgical procedures,
Moor Park even offers complimentary transportation home and gives patients access to clinicians’ mobile numbers, with the reassurance they can call at any time. The practice often ‘goes the extra mile’ to accommodate late and out of hours appointments to fit with even the most hectic of patient schedules.
Oral health
The centre teaches the good oral health message to all its patients, harnessing the fact that patients need to protect the investment of time and money that they have made with the treatment.
Sarah explains: “We have a fantastic oral hygiene team that take care of our patients. We offer longer than the standard appointment times to really be able to do a thorough job in both the physical aspect of cleaning, care
and maintenance as well as offer the support for on-going maintenance care and dietary advice. The more
restorations a person has the more plaque retentive factors they have, so more support will be needed to look
after their restorations.”
Patients undergo an oral health check every six months for the first two years and then annually for five years. This is assessed thereafter, depending on each case.
Sarah says: “We tailor the hygiene appointments to the patient, always allocating enough time to sit the patient
up and explain things in full, using different tools such as Oral-B power brushes and other demonstration aids.
We ensure the patient is fully informed and confident on the best way to use them. For home maintenance we
would again tailor the recommendation to the patients’ needs. We suggest they use TePe brushes and other interdental aids, and encourage them to use an Oral-B electric brush as we know these are more effective at removing plaque. An effective toothpaste, such as Oral-B Pro Expert, would also be advocated.
“It’s imperative to have good oral health to maintain healthy soft tissues and good bone levels around the implant, in turn this will preserve the life of the implant. For this reason, our oral health checks are key.”