NASDAL: Covid-19 resilience of mixed NHS/private practices - the findings

NASDAL members act for over 25 per cent of UK dentists (approximately 3,000 dentists) and in its brief to the SLWG, NASDAL provided an independent and informed assessment of the current fiscal position of the dental sector and observed that:

NASDAL developed a financial model, with a number of assumptions. A mixed practice within the model is one with approximately 50 per cent of their income coming from an NHS arrangement. With assumptions regarding pre-Covid-19 net profits, fee reductions, lab and material costs, PPE costs and associate and employee cost savings, both private (NHS income<20 per cent) and mixed practices appeared to be in fund deficit following loan repayments.

Indeed, based on these assumptions, a typical mixed practice would suffer net losses of £9,246 whilst a private practice, losses of £71,269.

Alan Suggett, media officer of NASDAL and head of the dental business unit at UNW commented, “We are not for one moment suggesting that the UK is now full of poor dentists or that the UK government should support zombie businesses. However, it is clear that most dental practices are fundamentally sound businesses and to see a good number in potential difficulty purely because of capital loan repayments, is a real concern. That is why it was key for us that in the recommendations, a government guaranteed loan support scheme to underpin lenders confidence in supporting dental practices and dental laboratories at risk was included.